The body crumbles and the soul ignites

Why does one begin? Beginnings are invisible. They are inaudible. Maybe they are even without memory. For that matter, is there really a beginning? It is proved that of beginnings, generally, nothing persists. Awena Cozannet has only kept a bundle of photographs of it – a hand full of images. The Romans called imago the effigy of their deceased ancestors. Awena has kept a few images of it, nearly ghosts. Beginnings are invisible, but they haunt us. An image is silent, it is consubstantial to its status, but it can speak to us. Awena considers these pictures and remembers that the earth was fresh…
Soul in brushwood and body in earth: that, in deed, she remembers. She remembers that around a structure of branches tied with a string, she has modeled bodies in the earth, in clay and in sand. That the bodies hardly took shape, that the earth was fresh and that the bodies went back to the earth where they came from. Dismayed bodies, buried bodies, ethereal bodies. Bodies in earth and soul in branches: the body crumbles and the soul ignites. The earth was fresh and the branches were dry. The body has crumbled, but the soul has ignited. The soul is a torch, which sets our lives on fire. Awena has shaped bodies, but she claims that these bodies were more than themselves. These earthen bodies exceeded their body shape. She called them Surgents, because they would appear suddenly indeed, they were the appearance itself and they were the soul of the beginnings. More than themselves, these bodies were pure presences. More than bodies: spirits.
Traditionally, the soul of the deceased are called “spirits”: their manes – their image so to speak. Imago : wax mask representing the deceased ancestor, image of the god Lares. The etymologists disagree concerning the origin of the word imago, but some guarantee it is derived from an ancient Greek verb which meant “knead, shape”. So the image would be what is kneaded. In the earth, Awena has kneaded images. Around a soul in twigs, she has shaped spirits: earthen bodies destined to the earth. Remains the soul, remains the twig, remains the fire. Memories, sometimes, burn. They are burning souls, they are wandering spirits. Of the beginnings nothing remains. Save this emergence. Save the trace of this coming to the surface: images. I was going to say: ghosts. Speaking of spirits, it is the custom to maintain that they are “ghosts”. Because they reappear. And because, time after time, that which has emerged in the first place, will emerge again.