While being at the residency at the Cité des Arts in Paris in 2016, I decided to make some blogs to document my time there. Manon Manon, was my first attempt at these. The blog resulted in a story build with words and images, that were woven together from the things I found on the streets of Paris, the drawings I was making, and the thoughts that occupied me at the time, which happened to be the 1953 flooding of the Netherlands, that my family had experienced and about which I had been writing a short story.
The Buddha looks at his watch and smiles his three smiles. The watch is round. It is half a smile and half a wave.
Together, they form a perfect sun.
There are eyes pushed into the waves. Red and blue and yellow eyes. On the waves, a man drifts around the sea with some nails sticking out of his skin. The man lost his house and his cows and his children which are hidden, somewhere in the black and white water underneath him, where his home used to be. The man can no longer feel his arms, his legs. He has been on the sea too long.
Instead of arms the man has nails sticking out his skin. The nails are there for him to hold onto the world. And for the world to hold onto him. Like a fishing hook thrown into the water without a line. But the man doesn’t know anymore, did he throw himself in the water. Or did the water pull him in? (Excerpt)
