SAPLING #42 — An image for safekeeping
When our lines meet, will one of us change course?
Or do we just keep going, straight for the horizon, or headed for something that seems to hold the promise of one, at least?
Waking up is ungentle: venturing beyond the familiar means falling over the edge. Certainties hit dead ends, all maps meet their fringes.
If you step outside the frame, all that awaits you is the abyss. That is what a framework is for, after all: to contain the familiar. With solid walls, and buttresses bearing the weight of our stories. Within lies all we understand, and that is how we know ourselves to be safe. Escaping it means disappearing from view.
But those afraid to venture into the flood plains, can always turn inward instead.
Tell me from what angle we will approach, which corner of the cross will be ours to meet on. I cannot promise you I will consider changing course. But, linear as you are, you don’t intend to, either.
We might turn a few spirals there, though, at the crossroads of ways and worlds. And as we do, add a layer only we have access to: a reflection, a memory, an image for safekeeping from gravity’s hungry pull, that preserves who we were there together, for the briefest of moments.
The SAPLING series is a joint project with artist and illustrator Jurgen Walschot.
Saplings are creative sprouts. I will write to the images, he will draw to the words.
