Andrea Verheesen
Visual Artist, Writer and Musician
Conception
Imagine sitting precariously on the edge of a cliff with the wind just propping you up so you don’t fall.
You’re high up on the cliff, looking down.
You’re a tiny dot.
A single atom.
A solitary and minuscule piece of matter, and you feel so tremendously physical.
The cliff stretches out below you, beyond everything and into infinity.
Suddenly your perspective changes.
Now you are the cliff.
You’re gigantic, expansive, stretching way out there beyond your own imagining.
You look back at yourself on the cliff way back in the distance, a minuscule dot, like a single atom and you feel what it is like to be the opposite part of yourself, the other side, the opposing force.
Your pespective keeps changing and you see things from one angle and then another and yet another.
You experience mammoth strength and then overwhelming weakness.
You experience being many and being none, being darkness and then light, colorful and bleak, alone and then surrounded, uncomfortably close and then again you are so far away.
There’s pleasant smoothness and then repulsive roughness; like a repellent sense of disgust followed by a nice comforting sense of pleasantness and contentment.
Within a moment there is everything in all different ways and then again, nothing.
I don’t know how I remember, I just do. It’s in my body, that memory, all through me, like the mortar of life. Without warning, or any conceivable trigger, a strange and ancient sensation would flow into every inch of my body and then transmogrify inside of me.
There was also a smell. A smell I originally, as a young girl, likened to mashed potato. It is a smell of deep warm moist security, of a home away from home, of sacred things and ethereal origins.
It wasn't until I reached puberty that I came to recognize that scent, and then one day I remembered that too, so clearly. It was the scent of a woman’s ovulation juices - like the primal essence of life. My first smell. And then, like I said, there was everything and nothing.
This existence. This life. Now. Then. Here. Forever. With or without me.
Andrea 2010
Site Title
Denial
Ah, yes.
This is it.
I am experiencing it.
As these words dissolved from his mind, so too did the experience. Vanishing like last nights dew. Of course, he watched it in his minds eye, shrinking back into the darkness of his unconscious and he wondered if it was retrievable. He wondered if he would meet it again and the more he dwelt on that thought the greater the feeling of loss. The greater the feeling of loss, the greater the need to have it back and the further away it crept into the land of the seemingly unattainable.
At that moment, he knew he would have to sit again. He knew he would have to sit until he could let it go, even though it had already left.
He imagined himself sitting on the rock.
He didn't like it.
He imagined himself sitting for an extended period, waiting. Waiting to be able let go.
He didn't like it.
He imagined the pain he would endure.
He didn't like it.
He imagined fatigue.
He imagined anxiety.
He imagined failure and ridicule.
He walked away.
For many, many years he walked. He saw many places, heard many sounds, tasted many tastes, felt many things, and smelled many scents. He experienced wealth and plenty. He walked in many directions, trying to forget it.
Sometimes he was sure that he had succeeded.
Sometimes he was sure that it was not needed.
Sometimes he ran into it in the most unexpected places; however, so great was his denial, he became an expert at avoiding it. He became like a dark shadow moving accross the surface of the earth.
Denial, like a monster, demands to be fed.
Denial, like anything, can manifest as habit.
Habit can become normality.
And so the shadow grew deeper, darker and wider.
Andi 1999
In my head
In my head there is a room,
It only just fits in,
Perfect size,
That is where I am.
There are two windows.
They're only small, and plain, but they might have a view.
A little man, outside, works the blinds.
When they are open I am dazzled with sunlight and warmth,
but when he shuts them I am in the dark.
It gets cold and I cry.
I think, if I cry enough he will notice me and pull a blind up for me,
just one so I can see more clearly.
Then I would not be so alone.
Sometimes the little man, he gets angry.
He pulls the blinds closed and then open, open and then closed, and all at once just to confuse me.
When the blinds are shut, I am waiting for them to open. But when the blinds are open I am waiting for them to shut, because I know they will.
I am too scared to actually look out of the windows,
in case I like it too much.
Maybe sometime he will open the windows - it's getting stuffy in here.
Last time I looked I couldn't see the windows through the dust, so I have shut my eyes.
I can still tell though, when he closes the blinds, because I get cold in the dark here and it makes me angry.
But now, when he opens them, I can hardly tell.
I think the dust blackens the light and soaks up the warmth.
Soon I will be unable to tell if they are open or closed.
Soon the little man will give up his job and leave me here with the blinds closed.
Only I will be here. Just me, alone in this dark cool room, slowly suffocating...
No!
I want him!
I want him to open the blinds!
I want him to open the windows!
I want him to clear the dust!
I want him to put in a skylight and paint the walls white!
If only there was a little man.
Then I could Ask him.
Andi 1993