Tales of the Inanimate

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

5: Acknowledge five things you see around you. An origami kangaroo, my bedsheets, a feather, a globe, a deck of cards.

4: Acknowledge four things you can touch around you. My softest sweater, the edges of the table’s mosaic, my palm against my forehead, this feather—it tickles!

3: Acknowledge three things you can hear. The seagulls, the foghorn, the cars driving by, below.

2: Acknowledge two things you can smell. My coffee, and the apple sauce simmering on the stove.

1: Acknowledge one thing you can taste. My coffee again, it’s piping hot.

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My friend’s apartment in Valparaíso is filled to the brim with books and little objects calling to me every day. It is nice of her to let me stay here while she’s abroad. I feel oddly comfortable in this home that isn’t mine, in the cocoon of her piles of books and in the company of belongings with a memory, real or invented. One Hundred Years of Solitude follows me from the bedside table to the kitchen, from the bathtub to the couch. And if it isn’t a galleon smelling of solitude and oblivion I see on the living room table?

As in the book, time stretches and leaps in strange ways. It jumps backward, to my childhood and a period of vivid imagination and playfulness, and forward, my spiraling thoughts bringing me closer to the day I will close my eyes for good. As waves of anxiety come crashing in, I find refuge in fiction and in these objects that my camera and I magically bring to life. Out of this moment came this series of looping videos, filled with cabin-fever and inner-child energy, humorous and wistful, fleeting yet everlasting.

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Playing in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...