Statues have always mesmerized me. They seem to choose to keep silence, guard it even, as apposed to being voiceless or obmutescent. They conspire in keeping a secret from us all. However, their knowing beguiling smiles betray them. They are bearing consciousness.
Was there a pact between these fantastical creatures and the arcane universe that created them? Are they the embodiment of the sculptor’s mysterious energy breathed through him in an inaudible whisper? Was there an exchange between stone and hand similar to that between Pygmalion and Galatea, waiting only for our sight to truly see what is there? Maybe it is because they are so trustworthy with the secrets of those whose lives they have been the witness to, they are given quasi-eternal life in return. They guard us, look upon us, but resemble us only in image. They are foreign creatures that populate our necropolis, collecting moss, decaying at a slower rate than our flesh, but still knowing love’s erosion, although unable to share their anguish of the end, be it that of stone or marble into dust.
In the corner of a statue’s eye, I spied an abandoned empty cocoon. But was it a cocoon or was it a nest? Regardless, it is a naufrage full of empty life, left there by the former occupant that had undoubtedly reached the apex of his transformation, like a full suitcase left open on the bed of an abandoned hotel room, stuck between two worlds: that of the staying and that of the leaving.
Needed he a witness to his birth? Needed he a silent guardian looking over him in his vulnerable dormancy? Needed he the unflinching gaze of the statue as an untold and untelling testament to his brief passage from a wingless bug to his flightful new form? What an odd place to have spun such a silk vessel. Such is the importance that some share with pharaohs that they prefer the testament of their lives to be the sarcophagus of their death than the beauty they left behind. Thus is also the way of the effigy. In this both share the same origin. However, both are paradoxal in nature as well, since one is there as an immutable representation of the mortality of men, a testament of lives gone, crystalized beauties and demi-gods; while the other is a testament of fluid and perpetual change. Life and death, both so closely woven together that to pull on just one thread warps the narrative beauty of the entire tapestry.
Lessons of life from the Velours Abattoir:
What one can learn form such a spectacle? From the perspective of the statue, and that of the insect?
Here are the common lessons we share with the statue on an insect’s naufrage:
-That we all leave behind what we used to be to become what we are called to become. In this way we disappear from the sight of those who are blind to the reality of our new realm.
-That what we leave behind is a shell made too small from our own perceptions of the limits of our boundless minds, bodies and souls.
-That some of us prefer to leave behind ornate mausoleums much grander and emptier than the lives we incarnated.
Here are common lessons we share with the insect on the statue’s stillness:
-that one sure way to become invisible, is to be quiet
-that we are, each one of us, the silent guardian of another.
All in all, blessed is the one who finds the corner of the benevolent eye of a silent guardian to change and leave his corporeal vessel .
Vicomte de Velours,
Carte de visite from the Velours Abattoir
Carte de visite from the Velours Abattoir
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