Stolen pictures: top-http://punctum.typepad.com/photos/gold_leaf_photos/index.html
bottom- from W Magazine October 2007
Photographed by Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott
My imagination has left me. She left neither a note nor a forwarding address. One day she said, "I'm going out for a walk", then under her breathe she muttered, "and I'm never coming back." I did not believe her then, she is often petulant. When she was gone for a while, I thought she was hiding among the books by my bed. But she could not be found.
I know why she has left, She felt unappreciated, under-utilized, abandoned. I changed. I no longer lingered in dreamy dialogue with her. I was too immersed in history and science. I wanted answers, I stopped drifting along the avenues of possibilities. I was tired of all the things that could be. History steals sleep from the reader, dreams become truncated, filled with events. Imagination always wants room to spread about, leave her socks on the floor and mess up the bedcovers. I found myself always picking up after her, then resentment started to invade. It beings with cutting words then turns into pricked sideways glares followed by unsuppressed blown raspberries . No wonder she left.
No one wants to be forgotten, as though you never existed.
I thought I caught glimpse of her among the trees, but she dissolved into smoke. And the leaves fluttered helplessly with laughter around my head. I did not run after the apparition, I'm too tired.
"One falls in love with certain places restlessly associated with the beloved and strolls among them, alone but intimately accompanied." - Cristina Peri Rossi Mona Lisa
