Sunday, April 7
WITH MY BACK TO THE WORLD, 1997
This year I turned my back to the world. I let language face
the front. The parting felt like a death. The first person ran
away like a horse. When the first person left, there was no
second or third person as I had originally thought. All that
remained was repetition. And blue things. This year I stopped
shaking the rain off umbrellas and nothing bad happened.
The terror of this year was emptiness. But I learned that it's
possible for a sentence to have no words. That the meaning of
a word can exist without the word. That life can still occur
without a mind. That emptiness still swarms without the
world. That it can be disconnected from the wall and still
light up. The best thing about emptiness is if you close your
eyes in a field, you'll open your eyes in a field.
(Victoria Chang)