It is no longer
this
heaviness
lowered at times together with you
into the hour. It is
another.
It is the weight holding back the void
that would
accompany you.
Like you, it has no name. Perhaps
you two are one and the same. Perhaps
one day you also will call
me so.
--Paul Celan
... my mother's hands ...
ReplyDeleteohmygod, i gasp. your mother's hands? jesus. and yet it doesn't matter, although it does. but i thought, your hands, my hands, everyone's hands. oh, how human! and what this does to me to see this, our embodiment, our vulnerability, our (small) strength.
ReplyDeleteholy holy holy))))
xo
erin
erin; in the body, we are all the same, somehow ... we are absolutely different and individual, yes, but the same life flows through us all, uniting ...
DeleteOh James ! Those hands , her hands they look so weak but no! They look so strong! I feel her strength of all she has done on this earth
ReplyDeleteBeautiful
Liz; i'm not sure that strength doesn't sometimes appear as weakness ... is weakness sometimes the strength to receive??
DeleteGeez, James...there is something so special in this photo (and the one before, that has a similar texture). It's like the image has been shaded with charcoal (really soft shadows and lines). Loving these.
ReplyDeleteHannah: thank you :-) charcoal is the color of memory, i think ...
Deleteknowing it's your mother's hands makes the picture so intimate that I'm almost afraid to comment! the startling thing is the unnatural way the hands reach into the air, the strange shapes created. I love the mystery of the Celan poem, we could input so many meanings...
ReplyDeleteMarion: caught in a single moment, even one's own body can be strange ... celan says everything ... nothing ... everything :-)
ReplyDeletei've been like Marion on this one, for so long, coming to look, many times, but "almost afraid to comment" speechless, i think it must be one of the most beautiful hands-photos ever taken.
ReplyDeleteand Celan's poem, next to it - more speechlessness