Snowpiercer and le petit prince in The Forest

 

 …

Writing this has taken so long.
I’m not sure if the words will hold.
They disintegrate into dust here.

 

Language is magic – it can help you find things, and also lose them again. Laurie Anderson, The Rocks (i)

~~

 

It capture the shock of grief. Emerging on a snow-covered platform, sounds are muffled and the silence folds like the heaviest blankets. The chill is bracing, but its starkness also brings clarity. In this stillness, you could sleep forever.

 

Then being whisked away on a train, not knowing where you’re heading, the world falls further and further away as you wonder where you’d arrive.

 

Other times I picture it differently. In the midst of mundane everyday life, perhaps while doing grocery shopping trying to decide between two types of cheese, four steel walls suddenly fold up around you, and the elevator lurches down a shaft deep into the earth and does not seem like it will ever stop. The drop is so long, time stalls. But already, everything has begun to change.

 

Nothing quite prepares you for grief. In a moment, everything has changed. A home. The scene of a death. Belongings. Rubbish to be discarded. A daughter. Next of kin. Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.

 

My drawings declares myself lost. Perhaps swallowed by the Little Prince’s boa constrictor? Then I hides amongst the trees. To lose oneself in the comforting quiet of snowfall.

 

I, too was stolen away by a beast one day, and it took me far far away. Either it metabolised me, or I absorbed it. We became one. There are moments where we struggle, and it hurts to compel it into silence and subdue it. I don’t arrange to go out or meet anyone, if not necessary. I am not confident as yet, I can tame this beast. I’m still trying to find my way back, but for now, words fail me, so I borrow other people’s. But out here, I can look and look at the moon.