Groundmagazine #12

GROUND

MARIKEN WESSELS

#12

Monument An actress getting into character

by Basje Boer

I am C, I am the color blue.

I am black, white and yellow, I am the sound of wind leaving through the pages of a book, the sound of distant thunder, never a word or maybe a few.

I am faded yellow and no place to go but home.

M sits by the window. Clouds keep altering the light, changing it from bright to grey within seconds.

M leans forward to look down at the city. The street is crawling with ant people on their way to work, lunch, hair dresser, lover, supermarket, school.

C, she thinks.

C is on her way home.

M looks down at her hands, flexes her fingers. She stands up and straightens her back. She slouches, licks her lips. She walks diagonally through the living room.

She is on her way home. Or so she lies.

I am C, I take the bus, don’t have a car, I dress with the lights off, I prefer the dark.

I confuse light with loneliness.

I am found maybe in a sigh, a slight change of tone, air in cheeks, back straight and eyes wide dark.

A handshake, a look, a gesture, a smile, a lie and I am C.

M is in the back of the car. She takes out the watch she bought from a gypsy on the street. She would never buy a watch like this but C would. She straps it on and looks at her hand. Flexes her fingers into a lie.

M thinks of flowers and of the shadows flowers make.

C, she thinks.

C is shy, she’s lonely. M is lonely too but never alone. There’s a difference, she thinks, but she’s not sure.

M takes C’s watch off and plays with it while looking out of the window. She mimics small gestures and movements of passersby. Slow down, she commands the driver.

She watches old ladies and young children, pregnant women and groups of girls. She mirrors the walk they walk, the way they hold their purses, the movement of their heads and hands and hips and shoulders, their laughter and the look in their eyes.

She puts the watch back on and repeats her lines once more.

I am C, you can trace me down the corridors and watch me sleep.

I am all the colors you can dream of and the sea.

M is on stage, existing only in the warm yellow light that makes her visible to the audience and the audience invisible to her.

M is C, she is the shy and lonely girl that resembles faded yellow, that has no life, just a home and prefers darkness, always.

No, she thinks. I am not C, I am me. I am a monument, a grave. I create and I kill. I shaped C, lent her my body. Applause and flowers will bury her.

Here lies C. M’s last words are but a sigh. She kills C with a smile, breaks her posture with a bow. The monument is a memory, the shadow of a flower.

I am C, here lies me.

No lies.

Only lays.

Translation page 35: “In winter frost conjures fringe on the branches.”

“And the leaves receive white rims.”

GROUNDMAGAZINE # 12 2011

Concept and photography: © Mariken Wessels www.marikenwessels.nl Text: © Basje Boer www.basjeboer.nl Special thanks to Karin de Jong/ PrintRoom Groundmagazine Editor in chief: Mieke Woestenburg Volkskrant gebouw Wibautstraat 150 - 4 hoog 1091 GR Amsterdam The Netherlands office@groundmagazine.org www.groundmagazine.org

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