Pale Fire, 2016
"I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane
I was the smudge of ashen fluff -- and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky."
- Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
Pale Fire is a space between faith and fact. Is there a heaven? And will I get to know it? If seeing is believing, and faith is believing without seeing, can I believe what I do not see? Can I force that seeing to reaffirm faith?
Fundamentally, faith is a construction. There are choices one makes, when we only have fragmented evidence, to choose to feel faith fully while shadows are the only thing that we can prove in our reality. I assemble faith as I was taught to, arrange the assemblage carefully, force it to project a fully complete symbol, a proof of the presence of faith. My birds are devotional, they are prayers that don’t have words. They are wishes I am wrong to doubt my faith.
By the false azure in the windowpane
I was the smudge of ashen fluff -- and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky."
- Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
Pale Fire is a space between faith and fact. Is there a heaven? And will I get to know it? If seeing is believing, and faith is believing without seeing, can I believe what I do not see? Can I force that seeing to reaffirm faith?
Fundamentally, faith is a construction. There are choices one makes, when we only have fragmented evidence, to choose to feel faith fully while shadows are the only thing that we can prove in our reality. I assemble faith as I was taught to, arrange the assemblage carefully, force it to project a fully complete symbol, a proof of the presence of faith. My birds are devotional, they are prayers that don’t have words. They are wishes I am wrong to doubt my faith.