We see the leaves flutter, as if they would reach to the sun again. Countless untidy and broken branches, with crushed leaves, sticky with sap, create negative-light patterns and simulate respiration. The reclining tree trembles in an uncontrolled movement, a last breath-faking life, a last manifestation of its will to life. An intense void remains as the air passes through.

Maria Zambrano wrote*: “What you have to do first when you breathe is inhale, a blow that is like a sigh, and no matter how often you exhale afterwards, something of that first inspiration remains to feed the subtle fire that it lighted … And in imitation of that centre of all life and being, breathing regulates itself by its own rhythm — one of the countless rhythms that constitute the sphere of the living being.. But the being which is forced to exist as an individual will find itself, on the one hand, in a certain kind of void, and on the other, in danger of being unable to breath; it will be caught between over-abundance and the void.” (free translation)

*in Claros del bosque (1977)

Pedro Calapez