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| Soheyla B. Fahimi- Osiris, 2009, Terrakotta in Bronze patiniert http://www.soheyla-b-fahimi.de/ |
There is an exercise, in theater, in team building training, in psychodrama: you let yourself fall down on your back and a peer is there to catch you.
It enhances confidence, trust, responsibility toward yourself and others.
Lately I did this in a real life situation.
Someone should have caught me.
He didn't.
He let me fall.
CRASH,
SBAM,
on the floor, without net.
I was suddenly falling, didn't have a clue what was going on.
During those fractions of seconds, I heard something was falling with me, it was my trust.
And I heard the sound of glass shattered in a million pieces, when it touched the ground.
Do you remember the sound of crashing glass?
It vibrates, reverberates, while the air fills with sharp tones, similar to the highest-pitched notes on a piano or a dream catcher in the wind. It was made of the thinnest glass I've ever seen, my trust.
In that moment I realized: I was lying on the floor, there was nothing I could do to prevent it from happening, it already happened, it was past. My trust was smashed in slivers on my left, on my right, everywhere.
It was brand new, only a model. A beautiful one, though, one of my dearest creations.
I would try to collect all the pieces and recreate it exactly as it was before.
Or I would leave it there and walk away, disappear from that disgracious place.
Or don't do anything, look at it, contemplate. Linger in the moment, outside of time.
Then slowly feel, more than see, if and what could be saved and brought into time again. Which pieces would I use, how could I make a more resilient?
Days before, I took part to a sculpture workshop by a talented artist, an amazing woman. She taught us to give life to our thoughts with steel wire and paper, solid stuff that embraces a more malleable one.
In the end, there is no wire to see anymore, only you know that your thoughts, that look like paper, are made of steel.
I was lying, the floor was cold, could feel it through the fabric, on the skin. I turned my head, once, twice, straight, a whole world around and above me. A whole world. New frontiers.
In that moment, I could have been falling into hell forever, just to wait for Dante and Virgil to meet me and tell my story.
Perhaps I was chained to a rock, an eagle eating from my living flesh, the punishment for disobeying. More likely, for not disobeying. Wasn't it worth enough, to gain back fire?
Yeah, the Fire.
Perhaps I was bursting in blue fading flames, holding on, before I rose from my ashes.
Although I felt burning, freezing, melting, there was no trace of ashes, no drop of blood.
It all had an indefinable esthetic.
What happened there?
Most of all, did it happen to me alone, was I the only one involved?
Was it similar to those intricate figures of domino chips, where a single touch makes them fall gracefully, to leave in place a carefully designed plan? If yes, was my chip at the beginning, in the middle, in the end?
Was it a chess match, my piece is captured, so I had to go out of the chessboard? Was there a strategy behind that? Where was the pattern?
Good questions, no answers, wrong way.
Again, what happened there? My honest answer is: something.
I cannot explain the whole situation, because I don't see the whole picture, as I am not the whole picture. I am in it, maybe a part of it and yet something else entirely, the one who reflects about it.
I can only interpretate what happened to myself.
In my no more so short life, I learnt that your experience of things, what you call "truth", is nothing but an indistinct image, formed through the spider web of your inner filters, a precious gift you have been building into yourself your entire life. In fact, maybe you don't know it, but you are an architect, who bears his most valuable cathedral inside of his own mind.
Leaving back the mythical insights and the abstact speculations, I started acquiring a sense for the meaning I intended to give to the event. I finally stopped looking around, wandering in transcendence and watched inside, where everything begins, where the source is.
I started remembering who I am, who I was, who I want to be. What I can do, what I love to do, what I'd love to learn. There it was, the big picture. No matter what circumstances will cross my path, that mesmerizing story will be my company, while I go on writing it.
Trust can be built on someone else's words, promises, intentions.
It can be built in institutions, positions, beliefs.
Though the place where it's born is in yourself, in your core.
Don't ever think it can exist without you, or that it depends on something else, on somebody else but you.
Trust is always a jump into the unknown. What you can choose is what you carry with you.
