Envy Gallery, Te Whanganui-a-tara, Aotearoa: Onward Crawl
23.08-14.09.24
Courtesy of Cheska Brown, 2024.
It was a promise that called her. She perceived it, quiet yet persistent, a whisper on her cheek that demanded dedication beyond mere obedience. To ignore it was to wander alone with sightless vision—a body tired and shivering.
Still, the Call remained close—its scent on the air, a gentle tug at her core that kindled her reverence and restored wavering devotion. As she stumbled forth, battered by an indifferent gale, it barely sustained her.
Without the Call she was nothing and her onward crawl would be meaningless. Neither her straining fingers nor bruised knees compared to her fear of its departure. This pilgrimage was as inevitable as the rough landscape she traversed.
He was much the same, winding across the unforgiving land of stone, unaware of his counterpart as he clambered, supping at the wind—at its murmur. His staring eyes saw nothing but a faint crackle, an echo of the unrelenting Call. At times, it saturated him entirely and he could barely distinguish his own meagre thoughts from its beckoning.
When the Call grew faint, he renewed his unspoken commitment to follow, and endured the awful emptiness left in its wake. He’d grasp at the earth with chafed hands, begging for a trace of the path he could neither hear nor see.
The Call’s return steadied his laboured breaths and dampened the groan in his stomach—sustaining him with its presence.
Do the surrounding rocks take note of their passage?
Does the land sense the pressure of their grip or the reverberations of their scrabbling tread?
Prompted by the Call’s promise, she sighed with the earth and tenderly reached into the deep. Cold grit clung to her sweat-soaked skin, enveloping her in its gravel embrace.
The stone beneath him felt warm, fleeting and fast to fade. He held the memory of it as the Call finally granted him permission to rest.
I lay myself down to the sound of your call, listening to your silence and inhaling your bitter scent of iron and clay. I entwine my fingers in yours and find the blindness lifted from my eyes.
