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Kazimir Malevich, Morning After a Storm in the Country






They carelessly entered a great forest that seemed to have no path leading out of it. Things they encountered along the way, things they could not name but had the faint knowledge of what possibly could be, were the same kind that recurred in their worst nightmares, in which familiar faces invariably wore the most horrible, inscrutable disguises. The palms that gripped tightly together were already drenched in sweat; occasionally several large beads would escape and form an ephemeral trail on the ground, directing to the destination of the unknown. But the known is always scarier.

The Known is the invisible monster that tugs benignly at your sleeve and entreats you the listen to a music audible through nobody’s but your ears. The music told her to perceive Time which, like an aging tree, will be robbed of every leaf and twig piecemeal, until one day when this thousands years of life is finally reduced to a naked and barren seed, something within it still quivers. If you care to lend your hitherto listless ears to anything staid and lifeless, you will find it whispering back knowledge and wisdom you used to know when your shrilly, wrinkled mess of a flesh is pulled out of a deflated womb. Every baby shrieks as if knowing too much causes him pains.

She assumed that no sooner she would be all alone in this great forest. The hand that grasped so forcibly her every finger would somehow unclasp before long. And so she would be the only presence that moved visibly and ostensibly about, in this labyrinth of towering trees. Her childhood scenes would pass her by hardly perceptibly than the subtle change of the sky when a bird whizzes by. Only fragments of those that failed to infiltrate into her prodigious memory materialized unannounced like the spirits that dwelled in this forest for decades and centuries. She would see them all with eyes showing no glints of feeling or surprise.

Let her play in the forest as long as she desires. She will be the Queen of all living things. Every creature will bow down in capitulation as she flounces by. The forest will change shape, then close in, barring all earthly promises to those who refuse to, or find themselves unable to, dream. The Sun will curtail its visits to this sacred kingdom. Cold breezes will breathe down her neck like a leering stranger pestering his little girl with incessant caresses. Every time she feels alone she will force a nightingale to sing, until the interminable sessions implode its little heart, and little drops of red will create little ripples of flowers on her dress. Humanity fails her but she knows love, and how strenuously she will try to suppress fits of sobs.

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