A second that we are in the same place or separate from each other, you know twice. You are two people. When you're
far, to me are still there. This presence is multifaceted: it consists of many images, passages, meanings, familiar things, landmarks, but the ' together is marked by your absence , as it is widespread. It 's like your person become a place, the contours of your horizons. Then you live like I live in a country. You are everywhere. However, in this country I will never meet face to face.
Partir est un peu mourir . I was very young when I first heard this phrase and it expressed a truth I already know. I remember it now because the experience of living in you as if you were a country, the only country in the world where I can never hope to meet you face to face, is a bit 'as the experience of living with the memory of the dead. What I did not know I was very young is that nothing can take away the past: the past grows gradually around us , like a placenta for dying.
In this country I know that you are your gestures, the intonations of your voice, the shape of each part of your body. There are not less physically real, but you're less free.
What changes when you're in front of my eyes is that it becomes unpredictable. What are you doing to me is unknown. I follow you. You act. And whatever you do, I'm in love every time.
John Berger, And our faces, my love, light as photos (2008)
