Jean-Louis Bouzou – Text Bubbles

There comes a day when solitude with its walls of silence once a prison becomes a refuge.

I don’t feel well… I had the feeling it wasn’t coming from me at all, but from you… I’ve just learned that you lost your father. All I can do is send you my thoughts, though I would so much rather tell you in person that, even though the death of those close to us takes a part of us at first, it also allows us to discover and nurture a space—long hidden in the shadow of our loved ones—that gradually leads us toward more light, growth, and wholeness…

At night, you often find your way into my dreams… I remember one time when, like curious, wide-eyed, and laughing children walking across the rooftops, we had fun spying on the world below. Is it because, besides being my mother, you were such a close friend? I couldn't say… But the fact remains that when I wake up, I feel neither abandonment nor melancholy… I simply smile to express my joy and gratitude, realizing that death is no match for love…

I do not lower myself—that would be hypocritical—just as I do not raise myself, which would be quite pretentious. I simply express my inner states: wonder, gratitude, joy, sadness, dreams, desires… Through the royal blue channel, consciousness speaks to the self… 

Sometimes, in the night I wake up and you are my first thought: "Might we not be the torn halves of a single country?" And, of course, all alone I cannot answer this inquiry— this gaping hole each time a little wider that I try to fill with words and images.

Put on your armor if you so wish as for me, I shed my bark to breathe in the truth of words and the brilliance of colors. 

It’s not silence, and it’s not solitude… It’s everything we never managed to say… It’s every moment of happiness spent without you… And most of all, it’s that closeness, that deep sense of comfort and completeness I felt only when you were near—something I can neither explain nor find with anyone else…   I’ve overcome everything but this…