She waits, she sews, she sows, she grows--old. What we ask of ourselves, of each other, the candles we light, the vigils we keep as the veil of our age descends before our eyes, our lips, our collar bones trembling like birds in nests. What if one's whole lifetime is used up by waiting? What if the whole of her experience is centered in longing?
Her fingers move along the edge of the envelope--after all the waiting, this need to pause again. What news? What news? I grow old, I grow cold, says the poet, but such aging is not rooted in the body. It is the way life tires us, how it wrings us like garments in a river and leaves us flaccid and losing our substance with every drop of water that evaporates, every bit of moisture that lifts away from us and into the sky.
We are dry, finally, insubstantial, quavering like rice paper cut into prayer flags and strung across an empty space. In hope. In hope.
To see Simonova's moving performance art piece that inspired this writing, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=518XP8prwZo
No comments:
Post a Comment