slow ending
Siri Hustvedt once said in her essay about Chardin’s still life paintings, “I feel human presence is there in the paintings, even though the human beings are gone. And by feeling so intensely the absence of the human beings, you feel your own mortality. And feeling that mortality is, of course, in a way, the same as feeling our humanity.” We know, but keep on forgetting, how easily people can be swept off the stage of life. When I see these scattered chairs, worn out carpets, dust and all the signs of abandoned daily life, I am reminded of the fleetingness of life and feel affection for the people who once fulfilled their lives in this place. I think they at least deserve this requiem for what they dedicated their lives to. This phantom elephant appears as a metaphor for a stream of greatness, which leads us to our inevitable mortality. Hustvedt also said, “Writing fiction is like remembering what never happened.” I’m pretty sure that it’s one of the reasons I keep on painting.
