Personal thoughts on life and love.


Sometimes during less than a second, I have a feeling of pure extreme lucidity.
Like, I understand it all, everything makes sense and falls into place.

My dad used to tell me, when I was a child, that time does not exist.
He would offer me a watch and say to me: «Look, time does not exist.»
I would not understand and would look at him, thinking he was strange.
Today I smile reminding these moments, because it makes total sense to me now.
I look at my watch and I know that what I see does not exist. I know that humans
have created a scale to measure what they decided to call time and that what we call time
is beyond my understanding. Time is beyond us and our planet, and far beyond what we know
from the universe. When did it start? When will it end? Not only life, but everything;
earth, planets, galaxies, infinity. I look at the sky at night, and I feel dizzy. My thoughts
and questions run at an elusive speed. I feel like I am running in the emptiness
of the universe. So quickly that I feel like something is holding my brain activity back.
Like I clearly cannot go further and so, I suddenly come back at myself,
standing still, and feeling like I was «dans la lune.»

I red on the National Geographic website that scientists have predicted
that in four billion years, our galaxy will collide with our neighboring great spiral,
Andromeda. Around a million years before the collision, the sun would have become
so much bigger because of the gravity that it would have burned most of the earth surface.
That means we’re going towards an end; us, earth, dogs, mountains and everything we see
around. We will collide and we will transform.

Not knowing why, I am here, on earth, alive, with the ability to ask myself this question,
and yet not being able to find an answer, is unbearable.

Is time linear if it doesn’t ever start and doesn’t ever stop? I don’t know.
I only know that time is beyond my presence and that since the first ever human
had a thought, we pass, thoughts and knowledge to human after human,
and we evolve in a way that we gradually extract ourselves from an initial condition.
The condition of having to endure life to be able to achieve our basic needs.
It’s like we endured to continue to endure until we accidentally created tools, fire, symbols.
We are continually extracting ourselves from the initial condition to go to a place where existence
can be greatly enjoyed. That means, when I don’t risk my life to get food, when I can sleep
with no fear, my body functions properly and I can reproduce only if I want to. When I tick
all these points, I can say that I am in the best conditions to savor my existence.

Unconscious you become, and unconsciously you do with it until
you become conscious of it.

I am the first, in my lineage, to access such freedom, and I acknowledge how
the choices my ancestors made in the past, have affected and shaped the present.
What they have seen, what they have experienced, the language they have spoken,
the way they have learned things, have influenced the way my life is today. I carry
in my body and my soul, unconsciously, infinite experiences of being from the past.

In this surge of thoughts, I rush to a mirror. I undress and stand naked in front of it.
I observe my face and my body. My father’s side of the family comes to my mind
when I look at my chubby feets and fingers. My large hand palms that I press against
my waist, are like my paternal grandmother's. Her hands are steady and strong
and so are mine. My face carries features of my maternal side of the family.
My eyes and my nose have the exact same shape as my mother’s, my grandfather’s
and my great grandfather’s, of whom I have a single picture. I haven’t had the chance
to meet my grandfather, but when I look at myself in the mirror, as I share the same
asymmetrical nose and the same, one more sagging than the other eyes, I feel
like I know him uniquely. The blue in them though, is the same blue that
used to make my maternal grandmother look so familiar to me.

She is the most important figure in the family. In a time, where women were not allowed
to raise children on their own, she was a single mother of five and fought to school
and educate her four daughters to the expectations the society had of boys.
She used to tell me proudly, one is a doctor, one an architect, one a teacher, one an engineer.
At the age of 29, she became a widow. Owner of a single cow, many chickens and great skills,
not only did she handmade her children’s clothes, but she styled them in the very last new tenden-
cies. My aunts and mother perpetuated her knowledge. As much as I tried to learn the same
artistry, it seems that I don’t have the patience to. It seems that I will be the archivist
of the precious heritage of the several generations that were before me.

I am not lost, I was never created, I am for ever transformed.

The idea that every person that has ever lived on earth, has, in the end,
decompose and spread in particles into nature, comforts me. I breathe the same air,
look at the same sky, moon, and sun as the first ever human to have acknowledged
the unspeakable feelings of being alive. Therefore, I believe my mother has not created me.
She didn’t reproduce as we usually say. I believe that in her womb, particles collided and transformed
and from her flesh and womb, I grew. From the food she ate, from the emotions and feelings she had, from her desires, from her pain, I became a person.

All of the cells that compose me, form the organs that allow me to experience the world.
I think, through my 5 senses, not only do I exist, but I eliminate my possible free will.
Before I put a word on a sensation, I feel it. That means, even though I have the capacity
to plan and organise my behaviours, my main way of being in this life, is through my senses.
So I wonder, is loving, the ultimate action? Is the pure simple universal act of love, the reason
I live? As soon as I have a beating heart, and from the second I have the ability to feel, I believe
I love. As an organism, I love the energy that makes me grow, so I reach anything that helps me
do so. I simply and instinctively love with all my cells, and I will always, continually, reach for it.
When for a moment this year, I realized that I was sinking and that I was gently hitting rock bottom,
I though about love. I felt for a moment that I could let myself fade away. Feeling this low, I could
only rely on my body and gut to keep me alive, keep me loving life and reconnect my brain
to the feeling. Nothing could have saved me if my body had no will anymore either.
I soullessly ate the food my body was calling and it felt good to surrender.

Thus, I titled my reflexive work Existential Crisis. It seems that during crisis,
important decisions must be made in a particular, survival, state of mind. The body
will focus on immediate results, and I’ve observed my parents raise me in a forever lasting crisis.
I wonder how much I’ve eaten of their stress. How much of their traumatic experiences compose
my cells? They immigrated and as much as one would wish to think that leaving for a better future
is good, I’ve seen how regretful it can be. Leaving the feeling of belonging, emerging from trau-
matic situations, rising above and building from scratch, leaves a person with scars.

In the end, I painted a sunset, and I wrote on top of it the following saying: « L’amour m’a sauvé ».
It’s a self-explanatory painting claiming that love has saved me. I painted while processing,
digging, experiencing self-love, family love, romantic love and different kinds of love without even-
tually understanding. I couldn’t say what love is clearly. I only feel, it is it, that keeps me being.


Amore, 2021, Oil on canvas, 80 x 100 cm


Drake, Nadia. «La Voie lactée n'a plus que 4 milliards d'années à vivre, mais notre Soleil survivra » National Geographic, 4 août 2021, ➝ National Geographic