••• XXV

spaces inbetween

a dash between the dates, a space taken from someone's love confession. all the spaces inbetween to which words owe the fullness of meaning. this is what i ponder on, watching this building. i imagine that i have a driving licence and stop by in this narrow alley parting it from the graveyard area, by this very building and its gaping eyes. windows. the lights are like on Tomasz Stańko's album cover. i sit still and yet i seem to speed through the air. the burnt bricks, broken panes and bricked-up windows. scars of fire faded decades ago, now colder than the asphalt of the emptiest street. i am pretty sure they burn on the inside.

darkest eyes, but their colour is far from black. light absorption on the full - is this a quality of iris or are the pupils this huge? not of fear, but of truth. and the fascination for it.

.,.

••• XXIV

haka-yoku

the Japanese term shinrin-yoku may literally mean forest bathing, as i have just read. if you switch the forest part for a grave one, you would probably produce a very accurate name for my natural tendencies of turning to graves when in search of equilibrium or refuge.

the customized term would be then grave bathing, haka-yoku. does it sound as silently to your ears as it does to mine? a true reflection in language, i almost feel how my muscles relax and how deeply i exhale. the relief of being home without posessing it.

there must be someone out there to whom the graves also appear like door in the ground. curtained with soft moss, green blades brushing solace into your skin as you fall through. this is enough to make the sleepiness set over my eyelids as i write these words, and i should not sleep. we all know how this kin meanders.

.,.

••• XXIII

division bell

sati - existence, real being, essential sound

rāgaḥ - love, feeling, musical scale

i love how yoga philosophy tightly connects life, truth, love and music, my life's only guidelines. to think about it on a catholic cemetery might appear odd to some. but is it really? doesn't this place show that death has a life of its own? and its own silence, an underlying genre of music.

the resins here glue together these seeming dichotomies, division bells do not reach me. i look at the the Christ and the leaf that soothes his head. the solace descends, a unique kind of peace you can find on a graveyard. salvation in a union with death. a life-scented departure.

.,.

••• XXII

shook out my salvation in all four corners of my room

isn't this touching? now you will perhaps understand better why i come back here time after time, seduced by longing. taking pictures is never my intention, yet i end up snapping the mobile lens to preserve these crumbs.

still life in the middle of a necropolis, a double one since it obtained the status of a sights. a tomb for tombs. and your beating heart in the middle of it.
there you stand, above a grave whose cross was stolen by the scrap collectors, imagining the hands that composed this twig cross. come back to touch the ground with a running life. sap like blood.

still life among the iron bars

.,.

••• XXI

little tin saviour

little tin saviour, did any ever go on his own from this place to blessedness? if i may ask you with the words of a song. if even your arms gave in and your feet  could not resist the force of friction. is it your heart that holds you to the cross or is it the rust?

for you would not jump into fire for a dubious task. this, i guess, is where gods and humans differ.

.,.

••• XX

lady nevermore

meet my grave companions. none of them is called Thought or Memory and i still have two eyes. all of them seem to descend from Odin's breed, however, and my sight is sharp, yet crooked.

with the crows around i cannot resist the feeling of an ancient bond that presses soil harder to my foot soles until it enters the blood. pupils set, heart beating like one of Lady Nevermore's. she is the mistress of contrast, adept of simplicity. bringing life to very few substantial aspects she makes it bare: the alternatives are only two. no polarity scales. no colour diagrams to confuse senses. no excuses.

she feels the air pending

her chest rises

.,.

••• XIX

innocence to break your bones

for the ethereal can be ferocious and the delicate can be determined. this is when stone breaks under silent wax.

i love to think this way. after all, constance is the quintessence of my in- and external pathways. to be tough without loosing the softness is to walk the border. it lies alongside cracklines

.,.

••• XVIII

the sky's gone out

oblivious to these trees for so long and only now did they dawn on me. black and dragging up to the sky, slowly and inevitably. resembling threads of black vermicelli, which loses its sound and weight in english.

in polish makaron [pasta] lies vocally so tightly close to maszkaron [an ugly deformed creature] and vibrates half-absurdly and half-sinisterly. wildly. silently pouring upwards. cutting the vision into comprehendible pieces. shadows directing your steps. your sense of perspective. the world tree - is it many now? thin-trunked and wicked?

.,.

••• XVII

called by the fire

the cemetery and its chapel burnt many times and each fire made it what fire does - bared, purified. ennobled. there is always a scent of smoke lingering in its air, or maybe only my recollections are most vivid when they spring from autumn.

improbably as it may sound, only after i chose the title for this photo i noticed the fading letters on the background picture: smoking strictly prohibited. yet again coincidence becomes a matter of perspective.

.,.