Angelica Aks

Defense. The most difficult thing was to preserve the balance at the beginning of the pandemic.

For me, the first couple of months was a nightmare. Then, small relaxation, understanding, acceptance. Friends and family raised the mood, and inspiration began to appear increasingly. Sometimes I went to work for a couple of days. In the afternoon, I wrote the paintings until I was depleted. After that, several days did not slip down from the bed. Grueling weekly dives in work. All the beginning to get up on the circles only in the fall. Whether this favorite season was cured, or time and suffering.

When asked to recall events that have changed our lives, the first thing that comes to mind is a feeling of fear, hopelessness, confusion. I can`t immediately overcome this feeling, thoughts wander in a fog of hormones. We did not know yet that the pandemic would last for several years, that we will have to live with it, that this can happen in our country.

Although, last expression, I already said a couple of years ago, about the war that covered our east.

The first National Quarantine, we were regarded as a sudden vacation, unplanned weekend, then, a week later, we tried to follow the everyday rhythm, building plans and filling the days of tasks, questions, the search for truth.

Video chat with friends, work, diaries, yoga, routine. Several months later, I remember how i lay in bed all day long, not even trying to find the reason for to open my eyes. Apathy. Indifference seized us, like a stone, that falls into nothing. We lost a desire to call someone, go for a walk, pretend, that nothing has changed that the mad world still exists and the planet is spinning.

Awareness that we need to live with it has not yet come, but time did not stop, people are born, die, and born again.

Favorite films revised, the home library has been passaged, and not to discuss with anyone. Especially painful perceived the impossibility of entering the embankment and sit in the beloved cafe at the pier. We stopped believing themselves and in ourselves. When the daily news tapes are enveloped on the number of cases, and the charts of the dead steadily grow hard to extract themselves at least a share of enthusiasm. We are hostages who are unfairly locked up in the dungeons, innocent souls, we followed the law, obeyed the authorities, and now we are serving a sentence for someone else’s offense. Then I had an idea of the painting “Eggs on the waves”, as the metaphor of the current situation, the potential that`s locked in a thick shell, steadily persecuted by the waves in the uncharted depths.

After all, it is not the darkness scares you, but the unknown. What will happen tomorrow, what you will hear in the news, the phone calls, what happened with relatives? Your shell no longer seems so strong as before, doubts have already been launched roots into consciousness, fluctuations, uncertainty, confusion. Where will the wave take me?

Self-saving, analysis, training and knowledge. We faced this when we were alone. The world slowed down, for some time we were moving by inertia. But what`s next? All life in motion, in trying to catch up with a mirage, plans, meetings, trips and everything in one breath. But then on circumstances, that didn`t depend on us, the whole world has stopped. For the first time, from the moment of birth we had the opportunity to examine yourself in the mirror, dust off the backyard of memory, to immerse yourself in memories and nostalgic. The future has lost importance, the present does not exist, only the past remains. And you are alone with him. What a nightmare. Then my spirit touched consciousness, and these days were the best and worst in my life. Who am I? Where to run? A woman, no age and color, nor young, nor old, nor dark, nor pale, nor little, nor highly, a woman who often talked to themselves, somewhere in dark workshops and dusty rooms.

And I myself turned out to be an uncomfortable interlocutor, which made you think to the end of many things that you didn`t want to think about all, stir up consciousness. War is the world Freedom – slavery Ignorance – Power Is this a mirror? Or is the reflection not in the mirror? Reflection?

Our homes turned into our dungeons. Going home I was filled with a filled of irritation, I already hated it.

Ugly chandelier, bright light, dull carpet. And how did it happen that we, free, honest, decent people, were provided with this situation? We sit in your kennels and we are afraid to flash the street. Have you been forced to this or we were already glad to play with bad sharper? How to save faith in the future, despite all the bleakness of the present, how to see the light when there is a solid darkness, when the eternal, strong, understandable world collapses and you do not know what to grab, because you are afraid to fall. And only comforts the familiar truth, only the unfortunate knows what happiness is.

The light does not shine when light. It shines in darkness. Hope never fades, it smolders like a small coal, until someone gives air and it will burn with a bright flame. Only a year later the pandemic we began to appreciate what we always had.