STILL LIFE

OPINION COLUMN # 6

In French, they call it a “Dead Nature”, in other languages, like in English, we call it a “Still Life”.

A Still Life is way more promising, way more alive. Since, even in stillness, the tiniest move remains. When Human Beings stay still, their nose wriggle, their hearts stand, their blood throb, their cells pound. When Human Beings stay still, something, no doubt, moves. A Still Life is way more accurate than a death sentence on a nature which, even still, moves inside as well.

Stillness might even move you more than any motion. Stillness makes you more aware of whatever is going on inside. Then you realise you need grand gestures to seize a slight change inside. You just have to commit to your own body and its journeys under your 2 square meters of skin.

In this exact still instant, in this writing minute, everything moves around me. Everything shifts inside me. I give a different look around. Silence and Sounds shakes invisible vibrations in my ear. The rain’s unspoken smell on the green or grey ground flies to my nose. The light and wet breeze stirs my arm’s tiny hair. Swallows twirl both in the pink night sky and my sparkling eye. My body moves even though nobody sees. And so do my soul.

It’s not a Dead Nature. It’s Still. At least in the eye. But it lives. And I let my body make a poem out of it.

And is this still atmosphere full of mental motion, of body dance, less gallant than Ulysse’s journeys and Pyrame’s Odyssey? Is it less valuable than grand canyons and small roads? Since even then, in order to utterly enjoy, you have to stop, on one foot or bike, and gaze for hours, and be moved forever.

This still atmosphere, by April, as the grey heat is making me want to remove a string and yet keep my wool. As night birds whose name are unknown are huming at my window. As the evening song is wrapping my couch and my soul. This still atmosphere is telling me a story of nothing, a story of life. A created moment. A written moment. A read moment. This still atmosphere is talkin gabout my day, of both my small victories and my soothed worries. Both my kind words and my soft ills. Both my wooden desk and my softened chair. Fated to welcome my whilms, inspirations and failures. This still atmosphere is marking my break, the bell’s church ending my day, my resolution I have finally embraced.

Slowing the time so it matches my heart and my state. And not the opposite.

Of course I am not writting an eulogy. I am telling daily life as my brain is beating to my ear, destroying my head so I know how tired I am, how uninspired it migh end up, how blue are my aspirations. I am telling ordinary life, still life, as spring already smells like a summer storm without the rain, as I long for my thunder.

Justine T.Annezo – April, 26th 2023 – GTM+2