PRIVAT PHOTOS
1983/2001
Throughout history, flowers have
carried powerful, sometimes
contradictory messages.
Red roses are the symbol of love
and the blood of martyrs.
Yellow roses are a promise of
friendship
or an accusation of infidelity.
The white rose embodies purity and
innocence.
The Victorians - never much for
expressing their passion openly -
established an entire language, a
virtual secret code, based around flowers.
Ivy would be sent to convey fidelity.
Lavender showed distrust.
Lily of the valley indicated a return
to hapiness.
Marigold signified grief.
A ribbon tied to the left of a stem
referred to the giver,
to the right to the recipent.
A given flower worn over the heart
showed acceptance of the message;
worn in the hair caution.
Upside down flowers carried opposite
meaning
of the blossom's usual statement.
Like my own life - heretofore -
upside down, impure - corrupt.
For so long I lived in a prison of
false memories and contrived motivations.
All gone now - stripped away like
cherry blossoms in a spring gale.
For the first time, the truth of the
past has been unearthed,
like some long sought-after ancient
tomb.
And the buried secrets of my memory
are brought into the light.
Exhuming those mysteries was the fire
of my existence,
the engine of my own purpose.
I poured myself into that dark
journey until I became the journey,
until whoever I might have been
became irrelevant,
unnecassery ballast left along the
trail.
But like a man given sight after a
lifetime of blindness,
expectation is based on a hopeful
ignorance, on a yearning fantasy.
That which cannot occur to us - does
not occur to us.
I am now confronted by a riot of
images, of sensations.
I am possesed of a brutal clarity
that in many ways
has taken away as much as it has
given.
I no longer have the luxury of my my
conceits;
of the blanketed warmth of my
arrogance.
The truth is often dirt-poor and
bone-cold.
And though I know now, that I am not,
as I thought,
the earthbound spirit of a dead man -
I am not in fact dead at all
For the first time I truly feel like
a ghost.
The revealed events of my past seem
like momentos
of someone else's life,
like faded portraits in the home of a
stranger.
And the man that I am now haunts the
corridors of those memories.
Tryying to make sense of it all, to
sort through my own family album
- I've come to this place.
A quiet place filled with memories
unfamiliar to me.
A place of light and flowers, of rest
and reflection.
An oasis of serenity, an eye in the
hurricane of my life.
For now - this is home.
Today all things appear possible
under a sun as bright enough
to penetrate my cold darkness to the
shining promise beneath its frozen surface.
A sun so warm that it seems capable
of melting the lies that trapped my heart,
like flowers buried by snow.
A life lived in the dark has the
advantage of its uncomfortable truths
remaining unseen, conviently hidden
from view.
Out of sight - out of mind.
A life in the light brings the truth
into the open.
You only have to be willing to look
at it.
And accept what the light reveals.
I thought I was dead. I thought that
nothing matters
I'm not dead - everything matters.
Everything always matters.
Life is liquid - everything dropped
into it produces ripples.
We are fertile soil. Every sown seed
germinates.
I find myself walking a lot these
days.
I could float if I wished, but I need
to feel contact with the earth.
I feel adrift in a flood, a torrent
of my memory.
When denied the truth of my past,
I was able to fill in the gaps with
my own hopes,
my own carefully constructed
expectations.
Through dark and obscured, this
vision had familiar landmarks
- easily reached horizons.
But the truth is the ocean.
Limitless - tireless - immortal.
like the sea the truth goes on,
oblivious to our desires.
Ignorant of our needs.
Willing to batter and drown us if we
don't respect its power.
Home - my home has always be defined
by someone else.
I've lived inside the dreams of
others, tossed like a leaf in the surf.
But now, with the truth washing over
me, I can not look away from the paths I took,
the waves I willingly rode.
Regardless of circumstances I had
choices - we all have choices.
One way or another we choose our own
destinies.
One way or another we find our own
way home.
I could continue to pretend I never
had alternatives.
I could build a cozy little cottage
of fantasies.
But I'll never be able to truly
overcome the lies of others
- if I just exchange them for my own.
They twisted my mind - that's true.
But why was it so easy to twist.
What monumental pain sets us in
motion
on paths best left untraveled.
But the truth remained just below the
surface.
Easily within reach.
If only I'd the courage to take it.
A new garden is planted - rooted in
agony.
Blooming in darkness.
I was once dead, a phantom condemned
to haunt a world of lies.
Nothing touched me. Nothing could
ever truly hurt me.
For the pain I felt was built of
shadows.
But I'm alive, awake, aware.
And even the piercing anguish of the
truth is a welcome relief
from the numbing cold of my previous
incarnation.
Feeling bad is better than feeling
nothing"
Ghost (Chris Warner)
ALLE FOTOS UNTEN VON OLIVER B.
