Story for performance #11
webcast from Paris at 09:58PM, 01 Jul 05
Yeah, 21 out of 24 hours have passed and I haven’t moved from 41K; reading little things, looking out the window, thinking about the life of the stranger sitting next to me. Finally, I can’t hold on any more, and I climb over them both. The aisle seat passenger is sleeping, and he wakes up abruptly. My body feels strange, stranger than ever.
I glimpse a sea below me as I shuffle to the toilets; I have spent many hours watching the currents crease the Aegean from on top the highest hill in Patmos whilst sitting on the top step of the white stone stairway that leads to the locked monastery door behind me. I desperately long to be there now, listening to the ravens, watching perfumed winds rustle dry leaves at my feet. Then the toilet door suddenly opens and it’s my turn. I enter and shut the door.
The ageing man reflected in the tiny mirror is looking back at me with absolutely no trace of the carefully crafted image he continually nurtures. The image has not much to do with aesthetics, but rather with control. It’s the first time I have seen him stripped of it. But it’s only a moment, long enough to splash my face, open my eyes wide and regain it.
Outside through the window the sea has clouded over; the sun is rising, it seems, over the plains surrounding Warsaw.