Zendegi

Lar, the city where I live, is a full reflection of a world full of despair and emptiness: waterless, grassless, ruthless, and disappointing. I would walk on its yellow, barren soil in that scorching heat. Here, nature is indifferent and base, full of depression and emptiness. In this void, I would see the rotted bones of dead animals which, like definitive signs of "nothingness," had emerged from the earth. At first, this blatant encounter stirred anxiety in me. The bones, bleached white under the hot sun of Lar, were a message for me about my own inevitable fate: to cease to exist.
With each encounter, my being would be filled with terror and my heart rate would rise.
I didn't even want to look at the bones. Eventually, I took refuge from fear in fear itself.
Little by little, I began to collect the bones I saw.
I would take the bones home and, while feeling both afraid and simultaneously curious and eager, I would wash and clean them in a ritualistic manner.

This process of cleaning the bones washed away my final fears. I was no longer afraid of the bones; instead, I loved them. Now they had become part of my life's journey.
I took the bones to the studio and carefully arranged them all on the old wooden table. I would watch them for long minutes, and then I picked up a rapidograph pen and white cardboard and began drawing the largest skull I had found from the earth. Each hatch on the surface of the cardboard calmed my heart more and filled my being with peace.
From then on, the bones are no longer symbols of death and nothingness for me, but rather symbols of creation. Symbols of the birth of a new work of art on the white heart of the paper🙂