cotojoki 2019 hand-scroll (ink-jet pigment print on non-woven cloth) 300 × 4300 mm While I was looking up to the sky full of twinkling stars, a friend of mine turned into a star in a faraway land. Somehow I always end up talking about it just romantically. Over an animal carcass I encounter in a forest, I lay an image of my deceased cat, as in any elderly woman, I see my grandmother who has departed this world. When I came down from the mountain where I had stranded and nearly died, I encountered on the road a butterfly that had just expired. Whether it was the butterfly or myself that had become a dead body didn’t really matter to others. I gently and softly cover it with soil, and put my palms together for it. Every time I come back after being gone for a while, I find something new having been born, where as some other things have disappeared at the same time. At any time, someone’s story might be beginning or ending. The vegetables I water everyday always grow bigger than the day before, and they are doomed to be eaten by me the day after. In my grandmother’s house, at the kitchen where she stood to prepare food and wash dishes, I try to cook her specialty simmered dish, only to fail in achieving the same taste. The longer I live, the more things that I used to interact with become really absolutely unreachable. That’s OK, maybe it can’t be helped ― saying this to myself, I ate it, finding the taste not so bad actually. It makes me scared to think about my mother going to pass away someday. At a crematorium, I take chopsticks to carefully pick up bone fragments of the beloved that has been burnt. I then think of someone who will someday pick up mine, wondering if that person will be someone fond of me or not. Hey, how does it feel to pick up my bones? It’s impossible to ask this question already now. I hope my bones will at least have a small pleasure while being picked up by that person. This year, I will finally f ind and walk through a forest that is unlike any other. |