A Djinn sits amidst a vast land, without interruption or sound. All that keeps him company is a dried rose and his memory.
How would it feel in that moment for an immortal? How immense the memory and his heart? I know at 29 years how enormous silence feels when memory keeps me company. I couldn’t imagine thousands of years of them. Would the heartache of loss render me numb? Or would the necessity of love be what keeps me going?
I have lost two of the closest men in my life, and what it has done is branded me with the knowing that we cannot fear loss. For even in the most blistering moments of grief I did not regret loving them. If anything I wish I loved them more. In those moments I promised myself to not fear loving again. I slept out in the desert for days after losing my partner, and I stared up at the sky repeating the words ‘again and again and again’ as to not forget.
This painting is a magnification of this heartache. This divinity of witnessing the heart. May we remain tattooed in the messages of loved ones and hold them with reverence. May we look forward with a heart open to loving. May we walk this endless place with an unrelenting trust in the falling.