Monthly Archives: November 2012

the morning a fork fell to the ground
and you looked at it for a long time. or how

you knit spiderwebs with your fingers
to wrap around your spirit crown.

it is fair to say je suis, tu es, nous sommes, vous êtes refugees in blackboard stories, easily erased, taking bullets with the passion of a tortoise, or the leisure of a lover—quietly, slowly, in all fairness, as it is fair to say.

but note in increments, take heed;
you drop moon perfume on your neck
before carrying on chameleon duties.

and now i wonder in these lofty interludes just
who you had your last conversation with.

“would you love me more if i was a stranger?”

“but you are a stranger, and every day i learn more about you.”

(vienna came and went,
soft on the tongue.)

5 novembre 2012 —

ce carnet est proprice à l’attente. je le sors lorsque j’attends. pas toujours, mais souvent. cette fois-ci, je suis à vienne, au chelsey, alors qu’eric prépare ses trucs sur la scène. je bois sa bière, j’ai mangé ses chocolats. j’écris mais pourtant je ne dis rien. je suis la seule femme dans cette pièce. je suis heureuse de revoir mon ami. j’aime avoir accès aux endroits sacrés avant l’heure venue. j’aime boire cette bière et j’aime manger ces chocolats. demain je retourne à istanbul. de retour à mes chats errants, au bruit de la rue et de la nuit, aux mouvements. vienne, tu es bien mais je ne t’aime pas particulièrement. il fait bon dire ton nom, mais je préfère berlin.

i remember when my mother taught me the word “potelé”, french for “plump”. i was 7. she had observed that a girl in my class, marjorie, had plump hands. i asked her what it meant. she described the roundness of the fingers, the softness in the flesh, the milky skin. i could see what she meant; my hands were quite different from hers, and i didn’t know if i should envy marjorie or not. i often looked at her hands afterward, and the hands of others. i saw their beauty and their peculiar independence in the way that they moved and evoked—uniquely, and full of meaning.

hands are an extension of our breath. we create with our hands. we craft and devise and translate our thoughts into stories, poems, melodies and masterpieces the same way that we use our hands to clean, pick up, press, cook and mime: indistinctly. we offer help with our hands. we caress, we cajole, we mend broken hearts and broken bones with our palms and our fingers. hands often silently communicate that which words cannot.

this may be how i came about to collecting hands. the hands i collect all have a story, and they come from all over the world. some were given to me as treasured gifts from knowing friends, while others i found (or they found me). the hands i collect are different in colour and texture, such as bronze, porcelain, plaster and wood. if a hand cannot be kept, i try to capture its form and shadows through photography.

somewhere hiding in the argentinian depths of patagonia lies a cave (or series of caves) whose walls are covered with paintings of ancient hands. known as cueva de las manos, or “cave of the hands”, this world heritage site bears the immortalised hands of some of the earliest human societies, up to 13,000 years old. most of the hands painted in cueva de las manos are self-portraits: stencilled in and representing individual lives within communities. these hands are a timeless testament to our perennial desire to archive and to communicate. i want to visit these hands. i want to walk through the spaces within which primeval fingers pressed against the rocks so that i may see and show deference to the stories that they shared, thousands of years ago.

an abridged version of this text was published here—please click and star, if you are so inclined.

amasya is nestled in a narrow valley along the yeşilırmak river in the black sea region. it is a quiet little haven of traditional ottoman houses, ruins of royal tombs carved in mountains, apple orchards, and the ghosts of shirin and ferhat. i have never seen a city quite like it in turkey. & i waited not, there.

comme les pas résonnent sur le sol lorsque le sol ne les absorbe pas. je vois musti qui attend, sur le palier, au bout des escaliers. il observe de ses yeux qui ne regardent pas. dans l’attente, notre regard est d’ombre. musti franchit la porte, il part et c’est moi maintenant qui attends et qui ne vois plus rien. je ne sais pas combien de temps je dois attendre, alors je bois lentement. les petites gorgées s’attardent sur mon palais et témoignent, à défaut du temps qui passe, du temps à tuer.

(all my little words—and there you are, returning, as though you had never left.)

il y a toujours un retour à l’attente, ou l’espoir d’un retour. l’attente n’en serait pas une sinon.