I weave fine orange lines onto the petals
of my drawings.
I don’t draw them; I let them grow.
The lines move forward, branch off, meet
other lines. The sheet of paper lies before me, within reach
of my hand. As the drawing takes shape, it
takes on a depth that my gaze
begins to explore.
Beneath my hand, locks of hair appear,
curls, strands, locks that continue to grow
far beyond the paper.
An ornamentation unfolds; I recognise in it
India, then Bali, then Japan.
I am not drawing any of these places. I recognise them
in a curve, a rhythm, the repetition of a
pattern. Sometimes a single line is enough to create a
sense of distance.
Sometimes I think I want to leave, pack a suitcase,
cross oceans, and then I open a blank sheet of paper.
The greatest journeys require no departure.
They begin the moment a line
They begin the moment one line
agrees to meet another line.
Each drawing opens up a territory that no one
has yet explored.
I walk through landscapes that exist
nowhere else but beneath the tip of my
pencil.
My body has not travelled any distance. Yet,
I am already no longer exactly in the same place.
The first violins appear; the Adagio in
E major, K. 261, turns pink.
I see strings, stalks and bamboo.
The music expands the space even further. The pink
is no longer just a colour: it introduces a
depth. The strings become lines, the
lines become stalks, and the gaze follows this
movement beyond the sheet of paper.
A few centimetres of paper are enough to open up
a distance my body has never travelled.
The sheet still lies beneath my hand.
But the space it opens up no longer fits within
its edges.
Light descends slowly upon the world
like a curtain that conceals nothing.
It simply paves the way for another way
of seeing.
I remain here.
The movement does not come from my footsteps. It arises
from what my gaze traverses. As the
lines advance, the place where I stand ceases to be limited to the space surrounding my body.
The drawing does not lead me elsewhere.
It brings ‘elsewhere’ into being here.
