hereafter

HEREAFTER Now, the bus is sliding on the frozen lake, breaking through the ice, drowning. It dwindles forever with all the hope and confidence out of our collective field of vision. An event that henceforth weighs on the souls like a stone and covers the place forever in melancholy. It is hardly avoidable, yet, to no avail, to moan about destiny which, from our perspective, isn’t just nor fair. That’s why we are climbing further and further up. It ceaselessly snows and storms, and it seems as if there were cries permeating towards us through the mist and the whirling dance of the flakes. We agree not to answer in order not to lose ourselves too much in the uncertainty that we deem full of malice and deceit. Eventually, when the mist clears away and the days resemble each other in the light so that they are not to distinguish anymore, some kind of peace appears, and people very slowly start to trust and to draw hope again. Their gait is upright, the gaze almost fearless, even the one towards the distance. After a time, long bygone, when people sit together, and the evenings are mellow, when they eat and drink together, and when during the day every thought, every step is easy again, luck is sinking down to earth almost vertically. To enjoy every touch, every noise, every flickering of light, and the countless little shadows, without interpreting all that, suddenly seems to be oddly easy. High above it is very warm in the sun, however, in the shade it is very cold. This coldness gets even harsher in the night. It seizes every water, even the kind that runs over the hillsides, and eventually hardens every drop in its fall. People retire to their dwellings, stick like children on the window panes, and from a dry, warm and bright place they watch, fearfully and curiously at the same time, the things that didn’t exist before. Under a big black sky full of white stars a blue brightness pierces through all things. Everything that is gone and lost derives from this deep intense black, almost real, and one wants to run towards it, touch it and hold on to it forever. Perhaps, without being watched, one succeeds to justify, rectify, or twist a thing or another a little bit. However, as one is aware of the illusion and the mistakes that could occur in too much haste, one lets things pass and leaves everything behind. With determination, one turns the back against all that and recollects the things that are close and direct, and those things that are contrived by hand or expressed with words. One gets things done step by step. In the process, time falls forward and then swings back again. The sky changes every minute and coerces everyone into reactions quick as a flash. Every thing, every object has to be inserted precisely into a place where it is protected and, at the same time, where it protects. In oder to know the right moment and not to miss it, the eyes are unswervingly directed towards the sky, and all the materials and all the tools are ready at hand in this case/ in the case of a fall. text: Siggi Hofer translation: Etienne Thierry