DON’T WORRY, HE WON’T GET FAR ON FOOT
“Sorrow is food swallowed too quickly, caught in the throat, making it nearly impossible to breathe” (Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing).
A form of contemplation, the quality of a gaze that strives to explore without damaging, to know without assessing. To see without becoming blind.
Gus Van Sant covering the territory of forgiveness and acceptance, tracking down despair, anatomizing courage.
The birth of a calling
The discovery of a hidden talent
The beauty of lasting beginnings
Empathy—and, more radically, compassion.
A form of mercy, too. For oneself, for others. For humanity in its irreducible scripts and achievements.
The American story of from ‘rags to riches’ revisited from the point of view of the body and the soul. The existential rise from despair, the understated heroism of fortitude and hope.
A variation of the American Dream, a declaration of will and purpose, and a requiem for posthumanism.
A form of prophetic insurgency, perhaps.
Marie Liénard-Yeterian