BARDO

Waar ligt de grens tussen dood en leven in een meer-dan-menselijke wereld? Reis mee door de onderwereld van Hannah De Meyer.

(The portal)

Do you remember crossing
Do you remember crossing and coming back
Do you remember dying and coming back
Do you remember crossing and waiting to come
back
Do you remember your past lives
Do you remember the time you were a cat
The time you were a cow
The time you were wood
The time you were a shoe
Do you remember flying and being shot
Do you remember the car crash and coming back as an egg
And when you woke up in a cave
And when you came back as bird
Do you remember that time there were 6 of you
Do you remember you had 4 bodies and one of them was crying

(the garden of the dead)

Right after Karol died, people started seeing spiders
everywhere
They were washing her body: a spider right above
her head
the same night, someone went out for a smoke and
saw a bunch of spiders on the porch
and then, at the funeral, while they were lowering the coffin into the ground
there was a big spider following
descending
going down
going down
going down in the same rhythm as the casket
a big spider hanging from an invisible thread
Is it a sign? Or is it a metaphor? Has Karol turned
into a spider? Has she died and come back as a spider? Or is it a metaphor? Is the spider a sign? Is Karol sending signs? Or is it just a metaphor? Is it a sign? Or is it a fact? Is Karol a fact? Is it a metaphor? Is it a sign?

(submission)

There are mornings i wake up and i know I’ll see
you later that day
I feel a shimmer around myself
I invoke you
I invoke you
You appear
It’s not only that I happened to you. You happened
to me too
It’s horrible and wonderful
And i cannot say anything about it
Except
I can only say that I’m returned to something
constitutional
that keeps breaking all the time
But I do want more life, more living. I do want to be in the world more.
When I think of you the only thing that comes to mind is a poem whispered by someone in love a thousand years ago
‘since you have no shape
no body
since I cannot see you in one thing
I see you in everything'
your presence fills my eyes
And I don’t know if my eyes are wet from tears or
from the rain
I can only use words like fated and chthonic Words that make us ancient
Words like barks
I dream about you
Whether I’m far away, or close by, you grab me, Whatever I’m up to, where and when
Anyway, being bound to you is bad, but not being bound to you might even be worse
And always anyway I think about you, in the craziest times, and never not
It must be that i love you and hate whoever hates you
So know me then, know my name Have your way with me
Have your way with me

We have spoken a lot about what we get from the gods
We turn to them for guidance, for support, for confifiding our secrets
But we haven’t talked about the ways in which the gods depend on us
Why do the gods and the dead turn to the living? They turn to us – much like an audience that is
without body, only eyes – to remember what it is
like to be alive to live in time
to age
to laugh
to sweat
It’s nice to be immortal and all
But sometimes there is a shimmer of missing Flashes flashes and it appears out of nothing even the gods cannot help but come to watch us
the living
they cannot help but be curious even a little jealous
even a little nostalgic