I Sometimes Wonder…
I don’t have many memories from my own childhood. We moved around so much that I never had an anchor, no place that I inhabited long enough for a meaningful impression. I recall only vague landscapes, a family dog. Childhood memories are often the most cherished; I wish I had more of them.
So, when I see children playing and forming their own joyful and carefree memories of youth, I sometimes wonder: what was my childhood really like? With this project, I respond to this musing by conjuring scenes of childhood, captured like vivid memories and imagined through my fictional adult wishes.
In Taoism, children are born free, spontaneous, and in perfect alignment with their own nature. Modern societies drive us away from our natural flow; just like the birds in these photographs, the playing kids don’t understand that, yet. They are still pure, free, without boundaries. They don’t care that the sky above them is already clouded.
I Sometimes Wonder
I do not wonder where everything is.
Everywhere is shops and children, trees and air,
Our gate, our garden, these are everywhere.
But Mama darling, Papa dear, I sometimes wonder
Where is nowhere?
(by Carson McCullers)
Taoist Sayings…
Wise men hear and see as little children do.
It is the child that sees the primordial secret of Nature and it is the child of ourselves we return to.
The child within us is simple and daring enough to live the Secret.
(by Laozi)
Yon Sim
