I'm not there - l'Absence

C'est bien la première fois que je pars aussi longtemps en "voyage". Six mois et une poignée de jours. Et puis, c'est un peu plus (ou un peu moins?) qu'un voyage, cette expérience de quatre mois dans une école américaine. L'explication vient peut-être de là.

Je ne suis pas étranger au phénomène que j'appellerai 'l'Absence'. Vous connaissez sans doute, je m'explique: lorsque l'on s'éloigne de son foyer, les derniers jours avant le retour sont caractéristiques d'un sentiment de non-appartenance de l'endroit que l'on quitte, comme l'endroit que l'on va retrouver. Un peu comme si j'étais déjà dans la file d'attente à l'aéroport (et Obama sait qu'elle est longue, l'attente!). Le corps est toujours présent, paraît-il, mais l'esprit est déjà tout tourné vers les souvenirs que l'on va retrouver. Cette séparation entraîne un détachement du quotidien, aussi bien sur le plan spatial que temporel. Regarder par le hublot, en quelque sorte, comme perdu entre deux eaux. Mais je dis perdu, alors que je pense le contraire. Ce serait plutôt le moment décisif du voyage, que j'appréhende, redoute, puis déguste, jouissif, l'Absence.

Or comme je le disais, je ne suis jamais éloigné aussi longtemps, et aussi loin. Lors de mes précédents voyages, l'Absence se résumait à quelques heures, lorsque l'on fait son sac, ou quelques jours, le temps de dire au revoir aux nouvelles (ou anciennes) connaissances. Quelle étrange chose donc que ce qui m'arrive ici, cette Absence déjà présente deux voir trois semaines avant l'embarquement vers des terres plus familières.

Nul doute que des marqueurs temporels tels que la fin du semestre scolaire, le début du grand froid hivernal, l'approche des festivités de fin d'année, y sont pour beaucoup. Et puis, le fait de repartir à l'aventure, de me remettre en mouvement pour les deux semaines qu'il me reste (Boston - Montréal - Boston - New York - Boston) sert de tremplin pour cette Absence difficilement descriptible.

Alors je commence à faire mon sac, à trier les affaires, à faire mes adieux. Et je savoure cette Absence spatiotemporelle que seul le voyage dans le temps et la distance peut m'offrir.

Je pars rentrer.


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Titre en hommage au film de Todd Haynes:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368794/

There was this time - writing class final

Dreams of Beasts

There was this time, I went to the doctor even though I wasn’t sick or anything. And you have to know that I am cheap. I don’t like spending money on things that might or might not be useful. Giving it to doctors is the worst thing I can imagine. But there is this exception, what I went to the medic for: I am now vaccinated against rabies. And it’s not exactly free: seventy bucks. The cost of a plane ticket from Paris to Istanbul.

We did not take the plane though. Hitchhiking is so much more interesting, and cheaper. It is actually better than cheap, because you are basically being paid to travel, paid with free meals, coffees, warm beds, showers, and of course, rides. I won’t even get into the whole meeting- incredible-people thing, that’s not my point.

So here we are, rushing by night on one of the few highways of Slovenia, 135 miles an hour, four days only after our departure from Paris. The two young drivers are overexcited and sleepy, thanks to many hours (days ?) of driving and a pack of Redbull, now lying crushed dead at our feet. Hopefully the extra-loud heavy grunge underground Eastern metal music will keep the driver awake, and us alive. Zagreb, the Serbian capital, passes us by, but we decide not to stop there: the sea is calling us. We made it – quicker than we planned – into Croatia, it is nearly mid- night and the night is incredibly warm after the cold days we had in Vienna, where we had to shelter into those warm cafes around delicious pastries and hot chocolates. We are excited and want to push it to the Adriatic sea, juste a couple of hours away. But the gas station where our two tired drivers left us is dead empty. The only soul around is a fat cashier who doesn’t even seem to have a car. Intrigued at how he got here, and having nothing better to do, we go around the small grocery store looking for his car. Their was a car indeed, but a couple was standing by it. accept to take the three of us after a few minutes of hesitation: it is not that easy to catch a ride after midnight.

No music on the radio, neither much of a discussion: they speak only Croatian, we don’t. It is warm and silent, the highway is empty except for a few trucks that we drive by carefully. Who knows if they are not watching TV, drinking, showering, getting dress, or simply eating as

they drive. Or simply taking a leak in one of those empty plastic bottle that they then throw by the window and only hitchhiker and highway patrols can admire.

We are a short distance from the city we want to stop in, but our drivers are going way further, they don’t want to make a detour. Not like that old lady who made a u-turn just to take us to the next town, in Spain

– on another trip, another experience, another story-. So it is decided, with our forced consent: the car stops on the emergency lane of the four times four-way and let us out. We feel a bit like cheap prostitutes thrown away from a truck cabin. The honking and flashing trucks passing us

by add some authenticity. But we made it, nearly five hundreds miles in one day. We can see the city lights not too far away, but the industrial area where we are is pure tranquility for a not-so-legal camping site. We have been warn by friends: don’t camp in the wild or you’ll get fined and it won’t be a pretty one. Of course we know better, avoiding law issues

is our speciality. We walk a bit to find the best spot, and find it: a nice patch of grass, crispy dry like everything else in this god forgotten land. The grass is high as my hips in some places: no one will notice us here. A friend and I agree that it is warm enough, late enough, to sleep without tents for tonight. My other friend hesitate, she tell us about the beasts that must proliferate in this kind of high-grass place. We laugh at her. It’s not exactly the Amazonian jungle and its snakes and scorpions and spiders. No worries: the sky is beautiful, we have never seen so many stars, so bright against the space-vacuum, so dark. She surrenders, too lazy to put up a tent anyway and we just lay down in our open sleeping bags, falling asleep like well-fed babies.

Someone grabs my arm, pushes me. I wake up, blurry shapes shouting around me. I turn on my flashlight. There is blood. There is crying. I can see my friend holding a tissue up her nose. It soon turns red, but I can still see the printed painting by Klimt on the tissue, sou- venir of the last museum we visited in Vienna. Something just bit her in the face. What was it ? Nobody knows. She was sleeping when the teeth went through her nostril. A snake ? A bat ? A spider ? A mouse ? Somme kind of rabbit ? I don’t want to alarm her, but I can’t keep it for myself: there might be venom, and she has been bitten in the face, we

have to hurry. My other friend jumps at her, and starts sucking the blood out of her nose. She spits it in the grass. Her lips are red, she looks like a soap-movie vampire. In two minutes, our sleeping bags and things are stuffed roughly in our backpacks. There is no time to waste. A road, or

at least a dirt path. Incredibly, a car is coming. It stops, mainly because

I am standing in the middle of the road, swinging by arms up in the air, blinded by the car’s lights. He must come from the nightclub we saw

on our way. We try to explain the situation, but the driver is drunk, not interested, and afraid of this trio coming from the bushes in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night. It is two in the morning. He left within few seconds, and we are alone again. Hopefully one of us remember the number to call the emergencies. I dial it and get a woman speaking in what must be Croatian. I finally have someone speaking a few words of English after a couple of endless minutes. They ask my our location. I look at my friends, one still bleeding, holding up her nose and tears, the other ones desperately looking around for a sign. There it is. We are not far away from a glowing pink motel sign. It seems to be enough for the rescue team. By the time we got to the meeting point, we keep wondering: what bit her ? Maybe a scorpion. But she would be all puffy or red or dead or something by now, wouldn’t she ? An ambulance appears after a short time. A very quick look by a doctor and we jump, all of us, in the ambulance. Flashes of red, flashes of blue. The streets

are quite empty. Our first visit of this seaside city has to be through an ambulance window. We don’t know where we are going, sometimes you just have to go with the flow. We stop in front of a small dark building, in what seems like a maze of barely larger-than-the-ambulance paved streets. No one’s awake in there. A woman finally shows up and let us in a small doctor’s office. She asks us many questions... in Croatian. It was too good to be true: you can have someone – more or less – speaking English on the phone, but don’t expect the doctor to be as accessible. And don’t count on those high-school language knowledges of yours: altogether, the three of us can speak French, English, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian. Useless. The travel notebook is not too buried in my backpack, a pen follows. After five minutes of Pictionary-like sketches and an unnecessary amount of gesticulations from the three of us, she seems to understand the situation we are in. We let our wounded friend

with the doctor. She cleans the blood of her face: two small red dots ap- pear on the left nostril. It seems like the teeth went all the way through, since you can see the two tiny holes inside the nostril as well. A real vampire attack. The verdict is clear: rabies vaccine right now.

But one shot is not enough. That’s the beauty of vaccine, they make you wait for your fear of needles to come back before you have to show up again and get another shot. I checked our calendar: next shot was due in Bulgaria, and the next and last one in Istanbul, the day of my birthday. We spend the few hours left of the night sleeping -in our tents- on the football field right outside a tall silent hospital building.

The sun showed up again after this long night. We went to the beach, one of us her nose protected by a big bandage. And we laughed and laughed again at whatever beast attacked our campsite the night before. That is when I made up my mind: just in case, when I come back, I’ll get myself some rabies shots. That’s what I did.

Just in case.

Fifty Camels

There was this time when someone told me he would give me fifty camels for the friend I was traveling with. After a short hesitation (only fifty ?), I politely declined.

Morocco is a nice country. Nice people and all. But of course, each and every tourist is just another walking-wallet that the local people prey on as soon as it gets of the plane. And there is not much you can do, really, to avoid being harassed, unless you have the budget of Michael Jackson and can change your physical appearance for each and every country you visit, trying to fit in more discretely. I can’t afford to change the color of my skin, I am as white as the washer standing in front of me as I am writing this. So here I am, wandering by the streets of Marrakesh with two friends of mine, trying not to pay attention as the camel offers and other marriage proposal. I am not even that pretty, believe me.

We are looking for the historical Jewish area and, according to our printed map, it should be around somewhere. Jewelry shops: we are on the right track. Someone in the street offers his time to show us around. We don’t want to pay anything, but he insists: he is doing that for free, he is one of the organizer of the reconstruction of an old Jewish synagogue. We accept after a short talk between the three of us: whatever happens, we are not going to pay him if he asks us to at the end. How naïve can people be !

We follow him into the small streets, the narrow corridors that separate the red buildings. We enter a house. It is a wonderful sight: the light flows from the open central area onto the delicate colorful mosa- ics on the walls, on the floors. It is in bad shape, but the green plants running on the walls gives it an even more dream-like feeling. A hand- ful of kittens appears between the shadows of a stairway. Followed by their mother, skinny grey cat with a collar. Followed by a tall stiff man, a stick in his hand. Our guide explains to us that he is the guardian of this place, and we have to pay him something to thank him for letting us visit this heavenly place. We look at each other: we knew it, we have been trapped one more time. We reluctantly hand out a bit more than half the price he asked us. It is not much, but being force to pay seems

always like a high price.

We keep going, following our guide. It is a real maze, the walls

are higher than ever, the light barely reaches the dusty paths that runs in every direction.We feel like mice following the smell of cheese, knowing that the trap will close on us at some point.

The guide, after some pointless information about the surroundings, shows us the Jewish cemetery through the bars of small windows in a small corridor. A friend of his follows us. The streets are empty in this area, the day is beginning to fade into a bright night, the moon already showing up above our heads.

Our little group stops in a dead-end street. People are watching us from the windows. The guide announces our fate: people are “recommended” to give the equivalent of twenty dollars each to help the recon- struction of all those nice places we had the chance to see. We literally can not escape, the men blocking the only way out. We don’t even have the slightest idea of where we really are in this limitless city. I am glad that I am not alone but with my two friends, one of which is a man. Af- ter what seems to be two hours of bargaining, we surrender and give the man most of the money we have left in our wallet. He finally shows us the way out, the main street where we met him just two corners away. We thought we were not stupid tourists, but travelers of the world. What fools we were !

Stuck on a boat

There was this time in South America. Peru, more precisely.

It was towards the end of my summer trip: I had to take a boat on the Amazon river to reach a city because no roads were reaching it. I arrived in the departure city past midnight, after jumping on and off overcrowd- ed buses. I asked around to late drinkers by the riverside for informations concerning the next leaving boat. After three back and fro at the same spot, I finally found the right one. Young people were loading tons of shipment onto it, carrying sacs on their bare shoulders, sweating in the sticky night. I found someone claiming to be the captain in person, even though according to my believes, he should have worn a captain hat, at least (and scars across is sunburnt face and maybe a wooden leg,

a parrot, something along those lines). He didn’t have a hat, nor hair on his head (but more than enough coming from the neck of his t-shirt. The boat was supposed to leave at 9 PM the next day and last three to four days, but I could already hang my hammock on the second deck, saving me a hostel’s night. Which I did, after bargaining for a hammock until

I got it for three times less than the first told price. It was a long day, watching people coming on board, installing their hammocks with their families, their friends, swinging in those thread beds.

It didn’t left at 9PM. It didn’t move anywhere that night. “In the morning”, someone said. Clouds of mosquitos ruled the place, attracted by the huge spotlights of the ship and the warm blood of both gringos and Peruvianos. There is barely enough space inside for all the ham- mocks: the tiny free space I had with my neighbors was filled with two more swinging people, and another row was forming above our heads, Amazonian kind of bunk beds. The rest of the crowd is directly on the floor, beneath us.

No movement in the morning. Rumor has it it should be leaving in the afternoon. The two hundred people and myself start to feel fooled by this bald captain. We obtain some food after nearly fighting for it. I miss the free distribution of Inca Cola while I am taking a shower, the later being water pumped from the river into a spider-full small cabin -which is, obviously, also hosting the toilets-. The boat finally departs after lunch. The

hint of wind created by our slow speed is a relief after those days waiting like dogs locked in cars under a tropical sun.

The water level is very low. It is my first time around but every- one can see the river banks showing the fifteen feet of mud below the grass level. But it is the mighty Amazon, and we are just a big but flat- bottom boat. More than two hundreds people on the three decks of boat, but only five of us gringos. And tens of live chicken on the lowest deck standing for food supplies.

We stop as soon as the sun goes out: the water is apparently too low to go by night. The mosquitos come back as soon as the boat stands still. Nothing like killer slaps on bright red sunburnt skin.

The day after, more and more people come on the boat at each stop we make in those tiny lost pueblos. We go down the river by zigzag- ging from one bank to the other one, trying to stay in the deepest places. We are going slower and slower.

My after-lunch nap is interrupted by people talking louder than usual on the deck outside. I join them to observe the sinking ship a short distance from our position. One can see a quarter of her standing at 30° out of the water. Titanic all over again, but with 95°F out there, and no string quartet. We are still going on, but every one starts to fear the worst. The captain has to perform extensive manoeuvrings for each curve of the river.

We hit something. It looks like we are stuck. The mothers start putting life-jacket at their children, and around themselves as well: I would

learn later on that most of those people, even though living side by

side with rivers, never learnt of to swim. The captain pushes the motor through whatever is blocking us. Three hours later, we are as far as a few feet down the river. The night is falling. I decide to quit the overloaded inner-deck, with its double level of hammocks and the kids on the floor, and joined the upper-deck gang. Gringos and penniless travelers, their hammocks swinging in the refreshing wind. Of course there is no more room for me under the shadow of the captain cabin, I have to swing were the sun hits hard. Tropical places around noon can be hot as hell. My nose has no more skin for some time now, peeled off by a different sun: the one from the high summits of the Andes that I just came from. Fortunately, I manage to train my ugly useless gift-from-daddy hat for a

nice american baseball cap from my former hammock neighbor. I still feel like I can feel some kind of skin cancer developing in the middle of my face.

We don’t move for the next three days. The sinking boat by our side is still half out of water, but it is not literally sinking down.

Shouts on the upper-deck. A boat is coming, it looks like ours but a bit smaller. It is the boat that left four days after us and it is catch- ing us back. Our boats are tied together with the thickest ropes I have ever seen. The motors splash water around, the engines make horrible noises. But we are moving again. We go slower than ever before. Our dual-boat and its three hundreds inhabitants bring out each and every child living on the riverbanks. The same children that jump on the boats before they are even still with baskets full of fishes, fruits, sodas and homemade cakes. A nice change to the everyday rice and beans with chicken bits that we get after waiting in line for half an hour three times a day.

When night falls and the boats stop, red nose clowns from Argentina show up and entertain the bunch of us in exchange of thrown coins and claps and laughs. We have to keep the other boat by our side because our direction machinery broke while manoeuvring in the sand- bank. We stopped for a night at Nueva York, not exactly sky-scrapper and yellow cabs, but very nice nonetheless. We finally hit the final desti- nation.

Iquitos and its half a million inhabitants, where I share two moto-taxis with my new friends from Germany and Japan to celebrate our arrival around a beer at the cheapest hostel we could find.

It took ten days but gave me great new friends and incredible meetings, among them the pink dolphins swimming by our sides now and then, and the parrots flying above us in a loud dialogue. New card games, new addresses in my notebook.

I wonder if it would be the same in a train stuck for ten days back in Europe.

Painting & Technology - Statement

Statement for my final project in painting & technology, cf my other blog

Moving Paintings

There is oil paint, and there is video. There is cardboard, and it is a canvas, and it is a screen. The aim is simple: I am trying to combine the quality of oil painting, its materiality – texture, pigments, brushstrokes – and an old dream of mine to see it animated, coming to life, breathing, through the video medium.

The three pieces, while being united by one single video-projection (mostly because of its technical possibilities), could each work on their own. Each of them is a different experiment, a subtle different approach to my main concern of “moving painting”.

The first one, which I called “The Cocktail Party”, is according to me the most successful of the three for combining and melting the video into the paint. The result is the depiction of an hazy movement, the figurative subject being quite unclear. Slow motion hurricane rambling bushes, a cocktail glass hanging in the corner. I painted it while the video was being projected onto it in a performance like action painting which I may develop into future projects.

The second one would be the “Lost in the Woods” video-painting. Much more figurative and thus narrative, you can see a dark box (actually a car battery) abandoned into the woods. It is glowing with a dark aura, emphasizing the uncanny aspect of the situation, the viewer asked to wonder why, what is it all about. It is much more a story-telling work than the first one.

“The Road” is the third and last one. Contrary to the first one, here the projection is the black and white “mapped” movement of a video, which applied to the still colorful oil painting results in a seemingly forward movement into the painting, onto the road.

Those three pieces, this installation, rise a lot of questions for me and my future projects: what do I really want to convey? How not to lose the materiality of the painting – which I'm really just beginning to understand, and don't want to put aside for a pure digital piece -? Isn't it like cheating in a way that I use video to hide flaws in my painting approach? Does the movement has to be forced to the viewer like this, couldn't it be part of the painting in its pigments, its brushstrokes, its inner light, in what A. Hollander in “Moving Pictures” calls proto-cinematic paintings?

Even though, I'l keep experimenting, both in painting, in video, as well as in their combination in the hope that something interesting will arise from it which I could then retranslate into maybe a more painterly way.

Edgar Degas: Intérieur, 1869 - Essay on the Sublime

This painting by Degas is currently exhibited at the MFA of Boston, as part of the current exhibition "Degas and the Nude".

When in front of this painting, I feel like being pushed back and irresistibly attracted to it at the same time. The intimacy of the depicted scene (sometimes wrongly called "The Rape") makes the viewer, I, feel so intrusive that I shouldn't see this, be in the room with the two characters. Because it is what implies this piece: we are a witness of the action taking place in this dim-lighted room, and more than that. The horizon line, thus the viewer's eye hight, is the same as the sitted girl's who turns her back to the standing man. Thus we feel, like her, overwhelmed by his presence, his daunting shadow against the door. He is blocking the way out, we are trapped in the room, in the painting. We have no choice but to turn our back to the menacing male figure, just like she does. If only we could.

Because we are drawn into the painting at the same time: the pictorial, material quality of the paint, its pigments, the details. And more than anything, the light. Coming from one single oil lamp in the middle of the room, on a small table separating the couple, it seems to create shadows more than enlightening the bedroom. Its light goes searching the faces, the features of the man and woman, but only make them seem more unreachable. It reveals the bright pinks of an open suitcase that we can not see in. It tries to reach under the bed, to reveal its mysterious ways captured into its darkness, but inly creates more dark corners, more secrets yet to be revealed, unleashed. It is frightening and beautiful. The tension is unbearable but we are part of it and are compelled to stay: who knows hat terrible thing might happen if we give in and turn our backs to it ?

So I keep watching, captured into the deepness of the mirror behind the lamp, an other unwilling witness in the room, and resist the urge to look away.

It is sublime.

A jungle love pursuit

Her: “Where should We go then ?

Him: I don't know, where would You go ?

Her: Could You at least try to think for yourself, for once?”

He needed time off. They had been living together for four years then, and He felt their relationship was going nowhere. They decided to take this vacation trip to Peru in order to change Their minds, reconnect, this kind of stuffs. Turned out He was sitting alone in this movie theatre – not exactly alone given the incredible noise of the large audience there in the dark, but very alone all the same. He wondered what She was doing, if She was still in this little town or did She take the next bus, still following the schedule and the itinerary They planned together. He wasn't very specific when He told her He had to get out. But He had been out for a week now. Out of the bedroom, out of the hostel, out of the relationship.

I feel alone.

He looked around him.

I have been dying for this coke all afternoon. The coldness feels so good. Even though there is no ice in it – my sister warn me about all those Southern-countries' water diseases -, the coolness of the fridge is better than nothing.

The movie was supposed to start ten minutes ago. After a month getting on and off buses and boats and planes and taxis and trains, He was not surprised anymore by the delays in this country. The lights were still on, but it was only a dim yellow haze. The roof and the two side-walls were completely covered with egg-boxes. Low tech sound-proofing. He tried to count them, but the lights were turned down when He reached the middle of one column. Blockbuster action movie. Guns, special effects, bad boys: everything according to the bad film poster on the front door He needed at this moment was in it. He wanted to sink into this movie, into some other character's life and troubles, and forget.

I am too far away from the hostel to get there on time: the bus is going to leave in half an hour. And my bag is not ready. I suppose I knew it, when I walked all the way on this side of the river. But I don't really want to give Him a chance, do I? I wonder if I missed the bus (or am going to miss it, same same) because I expect him to show up tonight at the hostel, or if I was afraid that He would be at the bus station. I wish I knew. Why would He be there tonight since He hadn't given the slightest hint of existence for the past days? For all I know He might be on another continent right now, why wouldn't He left earlier than our schedule considering the new..situation?

The barman is creeping me out. He has been watching me from the very first second I walked in.

The movie was as bad as He expected it to be: He was quite happy. He treated himself with an helado from this nice little place, hardly more than a hole in the wall, discovered during one of his lonely wanderings through the city. The girl who gave him the ice-cream wasn't the same as the last time, she may very well have been her sister, or her cousin. It is all about family here.

He saw Her in front of the hostel. Stepping into a taxi. He rushed after it, but it was nearly five quadras away, and His suitcase was slowing him. He left it behind and kept running, but there was not much to do. The blue taxi was already behind the corner, and by the time He could find a cab, He had no clue which direction to take. He turned around, dead body standing and walking at the slowest pace. When He finally raised his eyes from the lousy sidewalk, He realized his suitcase was gone.

Today I had sex with this Australian guy, his name's Andrew I think. I don't really care about his name. He was kind enough not to ask me too many questions, it was obvious I wasn't that into him. I don't regret doing it. Was I cheating ? I honestly don't know. I guess after ten days without any news from Your man, you're free to do whatever you want. It's the first time though, that I had an affair with someone as little known as he was to me. The sex was amazing. He was sweet and tender with me. He told me his story, but wasn't expecting the same from me if I didn't wanted to. He was fleeing from his big island because of some girl he wanted to forget, it had been seven months already but he was still recovering from their relationship. I wonder if I'll need that much time or even more than that to be myself again. I know that this casual sex thing doesn't mean much. Or it means a lot. I think I am starting to miss Him.

He entered a bar in a small street from which poured some bad techno music. Inside, a few people drinking aguardiente and smoking cheap cigarettes. At the bar, two silent men, their head deep in their hat. He sat next to them and ordered a cusquena, the only beer His budget allowed him. Not two minutes later a girl, not older than nineteen, sat next to Him. He hadn't seen her when He stepped in. He offered her a drink, she offered him a bed. He drank fast while she was talking about her American dream. He gave her a sad smile and followed the dark-haired girl outside and into the next building, up to the second floor. The room was small and so was the bed. She told him sweet words in Spanish that He didn't understand, He remained silent. She unbuttoned His shirt, He watch her get undressed. She had such a young body. Her breasts and thighs were small and unattractive. She lay onto the bed and asked Him to join her, to make love to her. He stood in the middle of the dark room, fully naked, very still. He asked about her age, she lied with a large smile. He asked again and got another lie. She finally said she really was sixteen, but she was in love with Him from the very first minute they met. He sat on the bed, His back turned to her bare amber skin. He cried calmly, without dramatic outburst. She tried to caress Him, to kiss Him, saying over and over again that it was ok, it wasn't her first time, and she wanted to come to America with Him because she loved Him, she was not a whore.

He dressed quickly, threw a few bills He had left, and left the room without even looking at her. For the first time in a few weeks, His mind was crystal clear. He needed to get away from here, and go after the Woman He loved.

I checked my emails today to see if He tried to contact me. I was surrounded by middle-school boys playing gore video-games, shouting at each other, complaining about the slowness of the Internet connection. I just had an email from my sister, asking for news. I wrote again what I had written for the past couple of weeks: “everything is fine, I'll send you pictures when I'll have a better connection”. I don't even take pictures anymore. I am not sure I want to engrave those memories in my camera.

He sat at a table against the outside wall of the restaurant. The wooden fish on the front was a nice promise of fresh-from-the-lake specialities.

I went to this nice place to eat for lunch. I felt good for the first time since He disapeared, sitting alone at this small table facing this big family dinner. A celebration of some kind for one of the older kids. They shared the biggest plate of rice I've ever seen, and each of them had their own small fish. My guide book recommended this place for fish dishes indeed, and it was easy to find thanks to the giant wooden fish on the top of the doorframe outside.

A ten-plus peruvian family stood up for a toast when he went inside to the baños, their fat bodies filling all the visual space.

I listened to the speech the father gave at the end of their meal, but my spanish is still very poor and I only managed to get that someone graduated or had a promotion, something like that. It cheered me up for whatever reason. I felt happy for them, and decided at the same moment that I should enjoy my holidays, being with Him or just on my own.

He took of His jacket a map with their itinerary. He remembered the long nights spent by Her side, planning everything. They were happy then, full of hope. They had tropical dreams and made love with Their heads full of heavenly pictures.

New email from my sister. She attached an article and is begging me (well, “us”) to go home. A bus accident, one more. But this one is damn close to where He abandoned Me. My brain just made a u-turn. What if ! What if I have been wrong all the way from the beginning ? I have been worried about myself all along and not one time about Him. What was I thinking ? I don't even know if He's alive because I've been so selfish.

He found a local newspaper from the day before. On the front page, a wonderful picture and a terrible headline: two female tourists disappeared in the Cañon that cross the area from the Andes to the Pacific, the main attraction of the villages around with its condors and wild llamas. Twice deeper than the Grand Canyon. His heartbeat got higher and higher, he had trouble reading. He was picturing Her dead body seen from above, crushed next to the rio down some dark cliff. The article didn't mention the names of the missing ones. He had to know. He couldn't find any address, any phone number in the newspaper. The last page had been ripped of. He threw both his arms in the nearest garbage, full of chicken and guinea-pigs bones. No paper. He ran up the street, did not see the press-store on his right, and dipped into the next garbage. He found a paper of the day, and on the last page, the office's address. He didn't need to ask anyone, it was the second main street, one that cross the Plaza de Armas.

He arrived ten minutes later, sweat dripping from his forehead, the nape of his neck soaked. He showed the receptionist-main-redactor-editor the front page He ripped of the first newspaper, and asked something about the victim's names in his poor spanish. The employee had a blank look on his face, interrupted in his readings by this sweating gringo. He finally took the piece of paper with the pretty picture of the cañon. He did not know any names, he just knew they were two young women. As requested by the Man, he called the police station and asked for details. Some people from an hostel alerted them. The names were a tremendous relief for Him: none was Hers.

It made Him think about the dangers that surround a woman, when traveling alone. What was he thinking ? He remembered Her father's speech, before They left. How he asked Him to watch after his daughter, those kind of things. And Her sister being paranoid about everything, not wanting to let Her leave the country, leave the town. Nice, rich town. All those terrible scenarios kept happening in His head, the image of Her crushed body coming on and on.

I wasn't prepared anymore. He is alive, or someone kidnapped him, hacked his account and made a very bad joke. He sent me an email four days ago, but I only found an Internet place today. I have no idea what to write back. I have no idea if I should write back or not. The least I can do is tell Him

She was safe and sound. He sighted very theatrically. He wanted everyone around in the guesthouse to know He was relieved. He pushed himself to smile, but it only was a faint evocation of a happy face. She hadn't written anything else. Nothing about Her location, Her plans, Her questions. And it has already been four days. Didn't She realize how worried He was ? He was being very honest about it in His mail, even though He tried not to list all the death plots running and ruining his mind.

I finally agreed to tell Him where I was. He's supposed to arrive with tomorrow's boat.

She was there, in front of Him. He wouldn’t let Her go again.

I am paralyzed. My body facing Him. My mind rushing in every corner of my skull. No escape for me now.

Artist statement for “you”.

It is quite simple. You don't have to think to much when you're in front of one of my paintings. It's small, you cannot feel but in control of what's happening there.

It might reminds you of a movie, or something you saw the other day in the street. Don't twist your brain, don't try to find explanation or resolve problems that just do not exist in my work.

You hopefully share my aesthetic choices, and appreciate the painting for the sake of it. A simplified vision of everyday scenes, details, with sometimes exotic or surrealistic elements. A dreamlike feeling counterbalanced by a more general dramatic atmosphere. The choice of colors might not be very appealing to you, all those browns, grays. But then, try to fully get the contrast it makes with those hints of bright primary colors.

The real question is, do you want to see more ?

Complex consciousness

The street was very alive for this time of day. They were still there wandering from one band to another, watching the different performances. But she wanted to be home. She had her pockets full of stollen belongings and was only longing now for her baby waiting in the dark room of the first floor. She could imagine the cries of her infant and the shouts of the nanny, and during one moment they joined the rumbling noise of the street. She then realized she could actually hear the complaints coming from her left and spotted a young woman, struggling with her own child. She knew her: she went to her house a couple of times. A two-floors mansion with more doors than in a castle. She remembered the smell of grilled meat and the green stairway carpet that softened the sounds of the footsteps. She wanted to have it for her; the baby wouldn't wake up each time her husband come home late in the evening with his large black boots.

But it was out of reach of her thief's talents.