Liz Rosen tells a cryptic and lyrical story of a cosmic secret-keeper. This story is a part of a public artwork mission with artist Heather Arak-Kanofsky.
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| Picture generated with OpenAI |
When the wind blows, I depart my physique and go strolling.
Generally I head towards the moons of Jupiter, crossing the empty, black parsecs of house with the deliberate lengthy strides of a missionary carrying the phrase. I let the rings of the Galilean satellites carry me alongside of their sluggish turns. After I tire of the view from Callisto, I stroll throughout the cosmic mud to a special moon, Elara or Himalia. I search the skies, on the lookout for a spot to empty my field of secrets and techniques.
Generally I spot a Canadian maple tree and slide down the fragile veins of one in every of its pronged leaves. I comply with the coursing pathways deep into the earth the place it’s sizzling and darkish and claustrophobic. I’m not alone down right here. It comforts me to see how every little thing is linked. If I discover the appropriate hole among the many roots and grubs, I could open my field and select a secret to go away behind. Later, I’ll return to this tree to see if my secret has taken root. I’ll look at the leaves to see if their sharp ideas have curdled. I’ll run my palms over the bark to see if it recoils from my understanding contact, and I’ll climb into the branches to see in the event that they lock twigs to maintain the stranger out. Then I’ll keep in mind what sort of secret I left right here.
There are such a lot of that I don’t all the time keep in mind which I’ve cached the place. However when an asteroid rolls its pocked aspect away from my strategy, displaying me its icy underbelly as a substitute, I do know what sort of secret I left on the far aspect. I smile to myself because the streaming tail passes by and the tiny particles of ice strike my pores and skin. Then I do know I’ve chosen properly and that the key is well-guarded.
Generally I’ll discover a child and stand at its crib listening to the silences of the universe between its deep slumberous breaths. I just like the infants. I open my field and select my secret particularly rigorously at these occasions. I blow the gossamer secret gently into the infant’s ear. Generally, the infant twitches in her sleep. Generally, he’ll hiccup. After I go to these infants years later, I’ll see the glistening thread of the key woven into their pores and skin in order that they appear to glow. I’ll spend a couple of minutes following them by way of their lives to see how this thread ties them to their particular futures, binds them to their particular pasts.
I used to surprise concerning the infants I did not go to, those who haven’t any thread to carry them collectively. I ponder if they’re unmoored and drifting. It made me unhappy. I’ve so many secrets and techniques, however not almost sufficient to provide to each child.
Nonetheless, after I hear the low gathering of the wind outdoors, like a moan eddying within the backside of a glass jar, I let go of my physique and go looking for a brand new place to go away my secrets and techniques. I wish to discover a place the place I might empty my total field.
Simply final week I believed I had discovered a spot finally. I had adopted the corona of the solar across the planet to the sunlit aspect. Within the mild hills of New Zealand’s south island, I stood and listened and waited. In my bones, I felt the large animals that after wandered these plains, the Hypsilophodonts and Titanosaurs who lifted their lengthy necks into the dawn and made the earth rumble as they crossed it. I adopted their ghostly photos till I noticed it: a tiny deserted tuatara burrow below an unremarkable little bit of rubble and shrubbery. I believed maybe that this was, finally, the spot the place I might bury my field and never have to fret about it. It was so distant. I sat on a close-by boulder and regarded out over the plains to suppose. The half moon was lastly fading into the brightening sky, and my carved wood field sat uncomplaining on my lap.
For so long as I can keep in mind, I’ve needed to set my field down and return to my physique unburdened. I consider the infants with their secret skins. I push my sleeve up on my arm and take a look at my very own stitched and double-stitched and triple-stitched pores and skin. I’m a rag doll held along with the threads of my secrets and techniques. If I put my field down and stroll away, will my physique unravel? I believe I’m made up of too many secret threads to threat it now. I believe I’ll grow to be dissolute if I attempt to separate myself from my secrets and techniques all of sudden. I’ll crumble.
I rise and stand over the tuatara gap. I’ll depart a couple of secret right here on this distant and horrible spot the place historical past and daybreak mingle. I’ll return at some point to see what has grow to be of the secrets and techniques I plant right here, analyzing the close by soil for fissures and the yellowing grass for illness. Or perhaps, just like the infants, the secrets and techniques will grow to be shiny specks of mica, making these hills glitter within the solar, and other people from down within the valley will come looking out up right here to seek out what will likely be idiot’s gold as a result of, by then, the secrets and techniques may have strengthened and hardened into geoids, boring, rocky lumps which, damaged in two, reveal the good quartz and amethyst needles of the difficult panorama which has grown inside.
I place two secrets and techniques rigorously into the opening. One dribbles from my palm like mercury, the opposite pours like black sand. I place a small rock over the doorway to the opening and say my normal benediction for safe-keeping.
Then I flip and stroll down towards Christchurch the place earlier I noticed a pea-gravel backyard in the midst of a youngsters’s playground. There’s a small pale statue of the Virgin Mary protecting watch over the gravel and the youngsters. I’ll tuck a secret between the shrubs at her ft – no benediction will likely be crucial – after which I’ll comply with the wind dwelling to assert my becalmed physique.
