detail from: KRK Art dizajn

Rocking World

by Aleksandra Đorđević

(translated by Ilija Šaula & Copilot)

When people cross from one world into another, their souls resemble small living goddesses – Kumari – hovering just above the ground. They settle on the pillows of those who remain, and for a moment, it seems the storyteller knows what they are talking about. Through black holes in the universe, more questions stream:

Who am I?
Where am I going?
Why?

What lies between life and death – what kind of unbridgeable thread keeps urging us to gaze into that imaginary realm of good and evil?

My first loss happened when I was seven years old and missing three teeth. Grandfather left quietly; at least I was unaware of the commotion surrounding his departure. I only felt the air shifting through the windows and placed my hand on his chest. I stared for a long time at his silvery-blue eyelids, searching around me for clues that he had ever existed. Around me, the scent of coffee spread like the hands of women keening, mourning Baba, 'lebac, and the curse of war. What do you think? I asked in my thoughts, in the space where he still lives, and I know he hears me.

The second time I faced death was when Baba died. In truth, death came for her the moment Grandfather left. I still feel her in the half-light of the room. She swells beneath the sheets that cover the relics of their shared life: the TV, the mirror, the photographs.

With the disappearance of the state in which they built their future and their family values, the essence of their being disappeared. With their disappearance, a liitle of me vanished too. And now that little seems a lot; it passes like air through places missing a tooth, an answer, love.

My experience of death then was like observing stars through the thick glass of a telescope. The grandeur of the scene was too vast for my understanding of the world. I withdrew behind the glass, clinging to images, the TV, the mirror – tangible anchors of reality. A membrane separated us. I believe it thins with time, and that the direct experience of death is more like that of an astronaut reaching the Moon – somewhat surreal and overwhelmingly intoxicating. And yet, between him and the new, unexplored territory, there remains a barrier: in the suit, in the air, in perception.

And what about us? Haven't we spent all these years trying to approach it, decipher it, conquer it? Even innocent moments of swaying above the ground feel like excursions from reality, a child's curiosity reaching toward the sky. Whether in play, swinging as hard as we can, or in earnest, in a comfortable armchair that makes the whole world spin, we long to be above: the situation, the other, ourselves. Because everything below, on Earth, is born of base passions and must not stain the hidden divinity within us. That is why the unblemished light of the soul, revealed through the Kumari girls, is protected by carrying them until puberty so they never touch the ground.

The stage of death we find ourselves in doesn't depend solely on the age of the body, nor on how many times a week we leave muddy tracks behind us on our bicycles. Death and freedom cannot bear each other. The more we resist gravity, provoking magnetic fields and chemical reactions, the more life dictates the trajectory. And those who succeed best end their search in prayer.

I would like to transform my losses into prayer, though not as radically as the monks of the Egyptian monastery of Aba Yohannis, carved into the rocks at heavenly heights. Their devotion is so great that each day they cross a dangerous path to reach this inaccessible sacred place. But sacrifice is inherent in the feat. Let it be proportionate to what I am capable of at any given moment. We do not wish to flatter death or God.

The path to God through meditation, mantras, and prayer need not belong solely to monastic life. If we visited the spaces of loss and hollowness more often, listened to messages from the other side, we would endure partings more easily. Isn't every journey inward, toward the self, tangled beyond recognition, a labyrinth? Thus, the faithful at Chartres Cathedral embark on this path both

 symbolically and literally, moving through the circles drawn beneath the great vault, while the princes of the Old Testament hover around them. A mind without thought, or non-conceptual awareness, as Buddhist monks might call it, may be the only gate at the crossing between two worlds, the only way to keep our feet always ready for flight.

And when it leads us into a dead end, the storyteller knows what she is doing. At the threshold between one world and another, a light flickers in warning: on that great swing from depths to heights, we will one day greet death. Whether we animate both spirit and body equally in that game depends on what flows through the places where teeth are missing. 

I know I am followed by the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

SHARE THIS PAGE ON: