Carmen Mariscal

Leave of Absence/Leave the Absence 

2022

“The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost”. Rebecca Solnit

The losses arrived unexpectedly, one after the other. I felt as if I were swimming between waves, whenever I emerged from the water another wave would sink me back into the deep blue ocean.

I was in shock and numbed by pain, unable to work on my PhD. 

I asked for a Leave of Absence. I played with the words:

Leave of absence

Left by absence

In absence

Leaving-living

Living in absence

Living with absence

Living absent

Absence of living

Absence is leaving

Leave the absence

I wrote each phrase onto paper tinted in Indigo: The colour of the ocean, of my sorrows and of cyanotypes where deep blue surrounds white traces of absent objects.

I read Rebecca Solnit´s essay on blue “…is the colour of an emotion, the colour of solitude and of desire, the colour of there seen from here, the colour of where you are not. And the colour of where you can never go” 

I wrote my last phrase Leave the absence and went searching for light.