Possibly almond flower, Eskişehir, 2023.
In my part of the world, it is the start of winter.
I watch as I walk on the garden path, the trees turn somber. I don't know where it starts. Maybe it starts everywhere at once, the first browning of the leaf, the curl and eventual crunch as the vivid, young greens turn to browns and reds. The air is colder. When did the warmth finally leave?
I have never liked the cold, the absence of vibrant colours, the feeling that winter has brought within me-- a sense of desolation and barrenness that matched the outside world. I have never liked winter and yet within it, I am, like a snail moving, slowly learning to wait, rest, and accept the limitations and finitude that are contained within life. My vision is frosted, my heart slow as I simply look at the garden that I had put so much care and effort into. Some trees stand tall, strong, almost as if they have been here forever, as if this garden has been here forever and required little effort on my part to keep alive. In other parts, bushes turn yellow, branches stay naked and bare and the wind blows through pale grasslike reeds.
Death is the moment of unknown transformation. We don't know what comes next. It's not the metamorphosis of the cocoon into a butterfly, but the inner experience of the caterpillar as it disappears and/or transforms. That inner experience-- where knowledge fails us--is death. Outside we may have the words to believe we know the world and what comes next in life. The body disintegrates, life disappears or transforms. But the death, the question of what happens to us is an unknown that I become closer to in this season of the heart.
And where are you? Somewhere... my mind moves to and away from the thought. I feel anger and pain at your absence, your recklessness. See now if you had been here, the seasons would have been different. This garden wouldn't have been unkempt and I would be farther from death than I am in these moments.
Your voice breaks through winter. You are loud and disturb my hibernation. I am deeply annoyed at this abrupt appearance, at the awareness of life outside winter.
We were supposed to look after the garden together, but you gave up. Now your voice and your feet loud in their movement through the garden, irritate me. You speak as if through foliage. You sound as if you are in sunlight, unaware or unwilling to look at the death of it all. How can it be that this garden holds both life and death? How can it be that we have such polar seasons in the times of our love?
I feel the absence of control again as I will winter to spread evenly through everything. I crave for one thing to dominate my inner world. But you are here, very much here and it feels impossible to accept death in the garden without seeing that somewhere not too far, lingers the sense of spring, and with it, life.
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