“I feel as if I am looking at the world through a keyhole and what I see scares me.”
Many people in Eastern Europe go currently through grief, an extreme level of anxiety, shock, pain, a feeling of loss.
For many Eastern Europeans, generational traumas have resurfaced.
For those who are able to read, maybe those removed historically from the current tragedy unfolding in Eastern Europe, and those souls who find solace in written words, I would recommend this very gentle book Red Is My Heart written by the French writer, Antoine Laurain accompanied by profoundly moving illustrations of a contemporary Parisian artist, Le Sonneur.
This book is a LOVE Letter of one broken-hearted soul to another soul who has recently left.
Reading Laurain’s words and contemplating Le Sonneur’s drawings, I interpreted it as a love letter to anything that we lose in life, not necessarily another person. This can refer to a group of people, community, small- and large-scale tragic event, loss of one’s identity, denial of one’s past, anything.
Red Is My Heart brought me a few short-lived moments of calmness.
There is this one passage that reflects some of the feelings I have had over the last two weeks:
“Since you’ve been gone, (…), I wake up every morning at precisely ten past four. I researched this phenomenon. It’s called ‘adjustment insomnia’. (…) It is said to stop when the casual factor is removed or the person adapts.(…). I do not see how your removal from my heart and mind is possible. So I do envisage waking at 4.10 a.m. for the rest of my life.”
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