Just ended a long walk with Gwylène. We rarely walk together. She prefers biking and I would rather do it alone! In Paris however, we constantly strolled around the city together. Back in Charleston, we are keeping up the spirit of Paris.

For the last few days, Gwylène seemed to be having a hard time coming up with a revised narrative for ‘Evanescence’, needed to write new grants requiring visions not yet quite tackled yet. So, during our walk we talked. At one point we sat on the retaining wall of a  near creek and we talked further. When it was time to go back she  asked me to write down some of our thoughts. Here they are, in the relatively free form of separate

sentences, linked only by a discrete underlying logic and a pseudo-poetic/epic language:

Reenactment?

Ritual

On Earth,

Everywhere there is ice, everywhere there is snow, at some point there snow on ice

Everywhere there is snow on ice, someone has taken a stick and made a drawing

And every time the drawing has be swept away by wind or rain, by time

Thousand of years ago it was just a winter game to draw on ice.

For sure, there would be snow again, and ice, next year

Today we may have doubts whether next year …

There  will be  snow

There will be ice

Will there be Earth, still, next year?

Today, to draw on snowy ice may be

The reenactment of a ritual as old as the human race

An affirmation of the presence of snow and ice

A praise of snow, a praise of ice,

A celebration of the Earth

A wish that it be for ever

To draw the way-oversize portrait of a dead human on snow, on ice   

Today?

It is a celebration of the dead – a memorial for a loved one

It is an understanding that the drawing will vanish

It is the cry of horror in the face of the vanishing Earth

It is a deadly warning to climate skeptics

Every time a child draws on ice

May be the last time

A child draws on ice