A series of photo-poems inspired by the ideas of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, namely the opposition between earthly and ethereal realms, the material vs. the ideal. The photos are a juxtaposition of skies, i.e. the spiritual, and roots of trees – to symbolize the strength of nature, the power of what is worldly and the life that sprouts from everywhere.
As Spinoza said, there is nothing beyond the immanent reality, no soul beyond the body, no god beyond nature. No external creator since everything that exists is contained in life itself, sprouting from every root and flowing through the blood of every creature. Afterlife and vague ideals are just tricks to escape our own humanity and physical nature, illusions to create barriers between us and life itself.
Everything that is, it’s already here, it’s already now.
“I remember you.”
Colorfield with no fences,
you, the animals running freely
a wilderness of no return.
I remember the taste of your tears,
holding your sunny face in my hands
and kissing your sorrows until they disappeared.
How dark can we be?
How much distance can we bear?
I remember our lazy mornings after a night of sex,
our bodies still smelling like last night
and those sounds we shared and no one else will ever know.
I remember when you told me:
think like a mountain,
my love, my pain, my self.
We gave each other silence but i wish we had given violence…
take your herds out of my hills
i’m not your shepherd and i’m not your food.
We know there’s no love in need and dependency,
only in wanting and freedom.
Desire needs space to breathe and moan.
Why is life drying all over,
maybe your skin is my lover.
I need a method for my madness,
a way to sell you my sadness.
Life’s drying inside out,
maybe my skin is your shout.
I need a method for my sadness,
A way to sell you my madness.
A way to sell you my madness.
“It’s just a flame.”
I desire you like a house on fire
in an anonymous city –
clouds of smoke that turn our heights
into a veil of bliss and drunkenness.
Someday the flame will eat our insides,
and we can’t wait to be destroyed
in that unstoppable love.
Eat me and I will eat you.
Until the very bone
because there’s no tooth
that sees skin as an excuse,
there’s no doubt that can fulfill
our desire to be young again,
to spend every moment
as it was the first time,
every gesture as an ultimate surprise.
It’s just a flame,
a part of us that we can’t kill anymore.
Even if perishable,
or maybe because it’s perishable.
And with that we live;
with that we are more immortal
than any night or nameless shout.
And we repeat to ourselves
and anyone else who wants to listen:
It’s just a flame, it’s just a flame.
“Love survives the truth.”
To make death die,
I tell you,
is the only way to live.
To kill the spirits in me
accepting myself as the body
I am.
Love survives the truth –
we don’t need an afterlife,
we don’t need a before father.
We exist independently of reasons,
gift of the beautiful chaos,
an absolute void
pregnant of so much life.
I am just a winding path of coincidences
fruitful collection of encounters.
No me, no you.
Just windows with unclean surfaces,
morning sights of the outside
and nocturnal peaks of the inside.
Insights and voyeurs of our own pasts,
we close our eyes to the future
because we just want this present.
We, here and now,
are enough.
“Rain drops on the void.”
I begin to rain.
Particles of water and everything else
shining in slow motion.
Perhaps dust.
Atoms of me
enlightened at every glimpse of the inside,
at every reflection of the outside.
Space, maybe void.
Then I let myself go with this wind
and shout to the world:
I’m a cloud looking for stormy days!
Change, a lack of self.
That’s why we struggle and sprout.
Not because we are the owners of history
but because it’s the blood and the bone
what make us rise and decay.
Until everything is accomplished,
everybody is solved.
We are in this together, of course.
Crowd of multitudes
that permeates every single moment,
unlimited possibilities
and beings to be unfolded.
Finally realizing the only difference
between now here and nowhere is a space.
The same space that makes the difference between no thing and nothing.
Emptiness.
There is change only if there is space to move.
Looking around, I see me as dust,
and, in each particle,
notice the nothing that reflects me first…
“Giving back whiteness to feelings.”
Fragrances of open books
in a rainy summer night,
of salty bodies after sex in a waveless sea.
We share the wetness and the sounds,
the warm wine
the desire.
Kisses that sound like skin
and skin sounding like wind.
From the coziness of a fireplace
to the pepper of the exotic;
a random encounter;
the choices of the travel we left behind…
we have this power to decide.
And then i think:
What struggles you light in me,
what joys you give birth?
You brought me back from the jungle,
gave me home, food and clean clothes.
Deep glares and shortnesses of breath.
How good it feels falling again with smoothness,
giving back whiteness to feelings
and starting all over again one more time.
One more end, one more journey.
How many times we said it in unison:
it is what it is.
It is what it is.
We are what we are.
Will we become?
“A bridge to be crossed.”
Gift for the senses,
taste for the impulses.
Make me jump.
Make me go forward
without planned direction,
a felling of no control; wind.
We, spinning with our eyes closed.
Don’t you see?, in you i’m no body:
i can be everyone.
In us, we choose to write,
always different on every sight.
Maybe a story; flowing.
In this world of chance
chaos with no privacy,
we keep a lightness inside;
perhaps a naiveness of being.
The words and the wants,
a bridge to ourselves waiting to be crossed.
Here we are
two me’s instead of one us,
towards the flame which is our guide…
so many worlds inside.
“A stone to be.”
What we need is an apple of stars.
We need stars and toes that make us
move forward without crying about the past.
Drinking from the wind,
we look and we see what we want to see.
But that’s the error that divorces us from ourselves.
It’s the elixir of our unhappiness
and the blandness of all the humanity.
There’s only us and acceptance,
acceptance of us,
of treasures to explore within
and unforgettable battles for a day to come.
A stone to be.
But there are no stones that aren’t made of trees,
and that’s the seed that make us see
and aspire for better highs.
Going up.
Going out.
And then we focus on the apple and forget
we aren’t in the beginning or in the end,
and that’s the moment we start to live.
A bite and an innocent feeling,
we are the grow and the pain and the ceiling.
For the better and for the worse,
we are our suffering
we are our healing.
“Hope is a blister, fear is a cramp.”
Surrounded by everything
with nothing or no one as guide,
I’m barefoot in virgin sand
a drop that falls and slowly dissolves.
But not a tear, never a tear!
I have the formula in my teeth
but the world doesn’t allow me to bite. Beautiful and impure,
dirty with life
as those ones who prefer mud to gold.
And so we swim and swim.
We swim far away.
It’s not in this wave they will make us stop!
Beautiful and impure,
together as always.
We are sea to be conquered
we are the tomorrow’s flesh!
No,
it’s not in this wave they will make us stop…
because hope is a blister, fear is a cramp.
And with the whole body
we decide we have enough gill to winds and storms,
tragedies and comedies,
shadows of what one day we’ll become.
Swim… swim…
we just need to continue to swim.
Hope is a blister, fear is a cramp.
And so we repeat to ourselves one more time,
while the speed is brought by the echo:
our body is enough for the ocean,
we don’t need help for beaches to be dreamt
and we don’t even have to reach them to become satisfied.
Because we overflow with this present desire
and that’s everything that fertilize us to continue.
It’s all about keep going.
It’s not this wave that will make us stop.
It’s not this wave that will make us stop.
“Two vases.”
Two vases among so many others
resting on a balcony under the sun,
sharing their warmth of blood that flow in us.
Furious and slow.
Like a hand that gently rests in a shoulder,
a caring lap, a long glance.
A tenderness that melts languidly on the tongue
without sticking to the mouth.
Someone who is more than the body
that one looks and touches,
a presence that radiates
more than that naked leg
that from the beginning made me desire.
I’m remembering you.
A blushing face after a night of sex,
a hug that fills more
than the sun of a dawning window.
The sounds we share and only us will ever know.
Present that fluxes and make us flux,
in an eternal process of enchantment
melodies that will never be forgotten.
Future of ruins or oasis don’t matter anymore,
our story is already on the books,
from the poems created none of us (not even the whole world)
can steal commas
or an end stop can finish what we’ve started.
Forever on hold,
seeds in our vases
drinking the water of lonely rains yet to be born,
warming up with the summers that will become.
Sprout me.
Be part of me.
Of the earth,
my ground,
your ground.
We will grow and blossom.
“The surface of the mirror.”
Here it is;
a beautiful journey along myself,
an escape, a new beginning.
I’m the one who will become,
the road with no end
no meaning, no sorrow.
In front of the mirror,
here i am.
In the reflection i encounter myself,
in each encounter i reflect my selves.
Two versions of the same inexistence
separated by the skin that shines
and tells what to see.
Surface that gives birth to distance,
that accumulates dust and makes us unsee,
that with unseeing makes us doubt,
and with our doubts makes us unlive.
Bringing us down from the heights
we throw our being,
ego and ideas of me
that in the empty space we insufflate
without seeing that nothing is in one side,
nothing is in the other.
And that the rest is noise,
the rest is me.
And so we try to convince ourselves:
unbeing it’s not the same as quitting
or disappearing,
it’s j u s t l i v i n g l i g h t e r .
“The strong and the weak.”
Walls and skins.
Heavy waves in a glass of water
and sand that solidifies around it.
A being that wakes up and has to decide
how to dress up to the rest of the world,sometimes velvet, sometimes armors.
Leathers and silks.
Choices to make every single day,
every single self.
And beyond the strong and the weak,
we go and we sing neither one of them
since the only thing that matters is to laugh.
Weak are those who surround themselves with castles,
soft stones with hard makeups,
mouths with ambitions of highness
and noses dressed with vanity.
In contrast
strong are those who don’t need walls,
trees are already enough.
It’s knowing that the fence that protects
is also the one that imprisons.
It’s knowing that a brick is nothing else than a collection of dust and time
veils and habits.
The new strong doesn’t surround itself
with eternity and solidity
since everything that matters is to dance.
Breeze that moves through forgetting
and not through resenting.
Dances with no highs or lows,
moralities or perversities.
No borders, no limits.
The old strong is made of cold,
the new is made of warmth.
Blood instead of stone.
No needs because i’m all about wants.
We have to unlearn the skins that are fake,
dissolve the walls that need to be break.
“Human becoming. “
Every day is not the same,
the average is not the norm.
I know I can feel the joy emerging from everything
when I forget about myself,
every time I’m able to suspend my own ambitions
to be happy or to be right.
Yes, the world taught me,
it took me some time and pain
but I think I’m starting to learn.
Learn to unlearn the arrogance of wanting
to be happy or successful.
I’m just me in all my ups and downs,
fruitful downs for uplifting ups:
a broken being because I’m all about becoming.
Only suffering can be a true shadow
of an honest smile,
and what a beautiful suffering it is!
Beyond fear and hope
beyond me and you,
beyond all this veil of illusions and beliefs
rotten spiritualities for boring souls,
beyond all this sprouts the dark honey
of existence itself,
the unique bitter-sweetness of life
that always comes in all its flavors…
smells of coffee and freshly baked bread
in the morning,
smells of a run-over animal rotting on a road
under the sun in the afternoon,
smells of flowered trees and tender breezes
during a golden sunset in the evening,
smells of shit mixed with rain water
going down the drain at night.
Isn’t this what we are meant to be?
Why running away
if everything is already here,
everywhere is happening now?
“To you, Voyage.”
To you, voyage, who destroy me
who beat me and shape me and rip me,
scar me curves and counter-curves,
a becoming blood-written on my skin
lived in the dirt
in the body
on the road.
Live me and i will live you,
i will transform, i will rewrite myself.
To you, voyage, who craft me
who make me sprout liberations and dreams
make me rain and fertilize,
You,
who never hide solitudes and uncertainties,
tomorrows without home
and chaos with no destiny.
To you i give myself,
i surrender:
light and empty,
permeable, messy.
Vagabond and child.
Sleeves and selves
rolled-up towards the future,
let’s keep dancing in the wild.
Installation view – Intercontinental Hotel Phnom Penh
Media coverage
Installation view – Strangefruit & Jam Gallery Siem Reap
Curated by Stewart Kidd, with video-projections (by disastertourist) and an experimental 360º soundscape, poetry reading and a handmade DIY limited publication.
miguel jeronimo photography 