In a realm mediated by surfaces and interfaces, I often feel exiled, not in a way that could translate onto borders, but instead displaced from a state which the daylight and its screens can never restore.
When dreaming, I find duties, truths too intricate to capture fully upon waking. I can not photograph my dreams, but images, like language, offer the promise of taming these speckles, glowing moments, minutes that are so many diamonds in my life.
…
We both look at the floor. The photographs, now scattered, begin to resemble something continuous. The frames have dissolved, and the fragments create a garden of sorts.
My eyes concentrate on a postcard of the medieval Hortus Conclusus, an enclosure that holds the figure of Mary, untouched interiority safe from intrusion. I am now thinking about what might have happened had Mary been snatched away by an elephant trunk, right through the hedge.
I glance back at the image before he carelessly dropped it onto the floor, and which, according to whatever law, landed upside down into an abyss.
…
Recently, I´ve been dreaming of volcanoes and deep oceans. It feels fearless, to be up against extraordinary hues that inhabit this temporality, shades drawing from mythologies that gesture toward something ancient. I often dream of the people before us, bowing to something unseen. The meanings of these rituals fade, or perhaps find new surfaces to crawl onto.
…
In the past decade or so, the valley has seen a sudden rise in agriculture, fueled by state initiatives. I finish work late, and if the weather allows, I don’t really mind taking the walk back home. The road attracts plenty of traffic and I never feel too secluded in the company of the other mosquitoes dwelling around our shared light source, the river. I pay little attention to the news, but I did hear of a lady last year, who tragically met her end on this road. Flying instinctively, it seems as if we are all unaware of the fact that at any moment we could get stomped upon by the lamp owner's feet.
Myself, too invested in the shapes of the stars in the night sky, would have had little reason to expect this sudden force to appear out of the black, and face first in the mud, I am unable to confront the swarm of feet and tusks and trunks.
…
As confronting herds wander beyond their enclosures, villages are increasingly startled by “stray elephants,” a pushback from nature. It seems as if there are holes in our world, or in the veil covering it. And from these holes, tusks are piercing through. I am interested in a space created by faith and fiction, to trace what is inherited and what is imagined, and to consider what it means to make something, even imaginatively, that one can never truly grasp.
The house has now been demolished to make better use of the suburban plot in a neighborhood shaped by proximity rather than coherence. One could hardly ignore the skyscraperly khrushchyovkas which rose within walking distance, yet a narrow garden, edged by tall spruce trees, wrapped this wooden structure, filtering sound and offering shelter. In the farthest corner away from the road, however, the trees disregarded this unspoken rule of transparency as if they were sheltering something. I could neither see beyond nor climb over; the thick vegetation spiraled into an impenetrable forest, and although in suburbia, it might as well have dissolved into a boggy wetland.
That garden was the edge of my world, and no matter what I was doing, I remained aware of that narrow strip of land in the back most corner, anticipating the slow approach of something vast enough to make the ground tremble. There was also occasional talk about war. If that was to be the case, I am sure that it would have started in my backyard.
When the mosquitos appeared, I would shelter in my bedroom. It was really half the size of a college dormitory, defined by a single skylight set into the tilted roof. Although one might have expected a view of our beautiful plum trees, the window inconsiderately turned upward, cutting off any sight of the branches and instead confronted the bare sky. The opening of the room was oversized, the door-frame unfinished, with only partially covered sealant bulging along the edges where unused hinges remained embedded.
I remember sleeping in a bunk bed appropriate for my age, directly across the entrance, and thus the unfortunate absence of a door conveniently offered my parents a direct view into the room of a toddler. Later, I outgrew the bed and was relocated into the awkward, although private corner beneath the sky. In my new bed, the heavens, pressing downward, constantly suffocated me. The aperture into infinity above left me feeling simultaneously exposed and bewitched by the stars.
…
Today, having moved elsewhere, I was able to revisit the room, my first bedroom, before its dismissal, now repurposed as storage space carrying a distinct smell of apples. What I could describe as initial disdain toward the tiny enclosure soon grew into fascination with the incongruous imagery that no longer matched the room's function. Wallpaper patterned with F1 cars wrapped the walls from the time of their construction to demolition. My parents had perhaps anticipated an interest in cars and although I might have disappointed them, the vehicles now feel close to heart, having absorbed both my habit and scrutiny.
My father has these recurring dreams, about the loss of relevance in the world as you age. He was a prominent man in his youth, an ambassador. I suppose losing that kind of standing has been challenging for him. Paul McCartney calls him to inform him that he has become president of Mexico and he wishes for my father to be the minister of culture. I feel a kind of tenderness for this dream of his. The face of the world seems to continue to thin and stretch across, but there is something beneath that what we have built, a face perhaps. I am trying to remember how to recognize it again.
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When we visited Mardi Gras, I made it a goal to collect as many of the necklaces as possible, especially the purple ones. I remember my mom informing me that purple, inappropriate for young boys, exists exclusively for old ladies, however this information did not discourage me from clinging on to the newly captured beads, for home seemed empty of such shiny, almost malevolent colors.
So for a long time, purple was a color I could not trust. They also say it's bad luck to go on stage wearing it. But there's this picture of me I don't remember being taken, in a lilac shirt.
Maybe that's when purple began to follow me again. I sense that beauty is the only stable form of faith left, when the world feels chaotic you make it bearable by framing it.
…
Sparkling orange was the first color I envied. I was not yet familiar with the ways that colors were set out to exist and had always felt a sense of dedication to inventing one. It was quite the challenge to conjure unexplored shades in my mind, but it was the hue of the velvety orange-gold blanket on the backseat of my grandmother's car which I had yet to see anywhere else, except for, when, during a drive under the late winter sunsets in the same seat I would decide to take a nap and the sunbeams from behind the trees would flicker onto my eyes.
This sensation, sparkling indeed, would also appear when holding a flashlight against the back of my hand, faced with the bright glow as it shined through my veins. For a while I thought it was mine alone, the color of oily borscht under fluorescent schoollamps, and no one else had yet to notice it. This was until my mom surprised me with a book about princesses, the cover encrusted with glitter under which lay a plasticy orange. Though disappointed, now informed that my relationship was not unique, I did find rejoice in discovering that crowns and tiaras exist. My mom´s love would be orange, but not the bright kind, more like terracotta, the one that soaks up sunlight until it feels warm in your hands. Sometimes it feels soft and glowing, sometimes strangely cold, as if it had pulled itself into another room without telling me.