Marianna Ladreyt, Under the ocean

From childhood by the sea, sometimes all that remains are feelings. The feeling of carrying the world on one’s back, a parade equipment, with a mount drawn from a bestiary without prejudice or bad intentions: dolphin, crocodile, dinosaur, orca, duck, or shark. The ritual is inflated, the launch a conquest. And against the skin, beyond this layer that protects from the sun, begins a hand-to-hand encounter with matter: floating, sliding, and rasping. “Under the ocean,” there are also fears. The abyss and its uncertain depths. That’s why you never stray too far from the shore, and cling to the buoy.
Maybe the world down there isn’t so hostile. We should get to know it, at least look at it with simple eyes, to give it a chance to be. Life would be its first measure, colour its standard. A paradise in exile, regenerated in celebration, where everything is created and transformed, a sanctuary of good fortune, populated by lovely chimeras and friendly monsters, bouncing corals, luminous algae, where everything springs forth and exposes itself. Warmth would lodge in every corner, and we’d even make it our home, deep down, the multicoloured refuge of the rejected and outcasts, the futile opportunity to inhabit again and differently the depths of the infamous, the dreams that last to challenge abandonment. Play would be the only rule, insolence the only virtue. The endless “holiday club” would finally exist.
This is how you ask adult questions with childhood memories, to cover up with proof of life the illusions of a world that is escaping and drifting.