[Jupiter]

Monologue: The Forest After you

Today I woke up wanting to go into the forest very early. Of course, I didn’t make it, you know me. I think I only start functioning after nine. Still, it seemed like a good goal, a place to be, even if arriving there at ten. It resonated in me like a silent promise to you, that I would go on despite your departure. Silent too would be the sound of the woods. So different from the one you walked through.
It’s remarkable, my love, how the landscape changes every day, how the planet spins and the sun races with the stars to who knows where. One thing is certain: nothing stays where it once was. Be it a river or be it our love. Things were so different, I think I’ve noticed just a touch less humidity. The plants seem more familiar to me, but it also feels as if half of those that were there, making all that cold and shade, have vanished, left, gone with the sun. Maybe it’s because it’s Saturday and many must be with their families…

I saw many empty gaps between the trees, where at times your image would pass, pointing me to look back (or was it a spirit? Surely I don’t walk alone, whether among the living, the dead, or the enchanted). My love, today the birds sang much louder. There were many in the tree canopies, which I am starting to identify. Today, even a little monkey looked at me. Ah, and there were many different insects. You know my eyes always fall on ants? And bees? And… wasps? And also caterpillars? And how about butterflies? Yes. Butterflies, the ones we saw on those yellow flowers when your eyes were turned to the canopy and mine blind, to the ground. Oh—on rereading I remembered they were white flowers, right?. 

I don’t know where I got the yellow from.

Maybe from you.

My love, you left a piece of me alone. That’s right, a piece of me, one I had left with you and you had been mixing over the months. Thank you for giving it back, and I, for now, hold a piece of you—but I’ll return it later, all right? It needs to stay with me for a few months; we’ll negotiate, just like Life  and Death over Caius in the crossroads?

For what I write is about life and death, presence and absence, scent and silence—the silence of the noise of hundreds of birds, insects, and the creaking of trunks, whether object or beast, one cannot tell.

Speaking of objects, today I noticed many pieces of branches on the ground. And I thought: what is an object? Yes, on a walk one asks about everything. At first, I thought an object was something that has a function, right? But no, an object can also be, perhaps, just a fragment of something that may or may not have meaning. And to you, what is an object? When a stone lies on the ground, is it an object? But when you choose to pick it up to give it to me, does it cease to be a non-object and become an object? And if you only choose to pick it up but never do—then what? Every time you look at that stone, is it an object? Then is the object what is touched by the mind? By the will? That which carries meaning and can be given as a gift?If so, then objectify me!

I hope to cease being an human, perhaps.

Today, within the forest, among the other objects, plants, insects, and animals, I thought of what troubles me. The desire to belong, the desire to be heard, understood, comprehended, the feeling of being too much, of not fitting in. Did you know all this is biological? We, little hairless monkeys, survive in groups, don’t we? So it is so hard to remain true to oneself without feeling this deep pain—and now I point the blame to it: biological! I’ve been thinking about this. Perhaps the desire to be an object to others is biological as well. But when I ask you to objectify me, it is different—it is to take me out of flesh, out of humanity and biology, and turn me into stone. Not into function, but into a poem lodged in the throat, a belly full of nourishment, into truth, into bond, and into connection.

Perhaps all of this is biological indeed.

Venus Kasca