enlightenment is an illusion

so yanno. that’s pleasant.

a dude researching them described the pain as “…immediate, excruciating, unrelenting pain that simply shuts down one’s ability to do anything, except scream. Mental discipline simply does not work in these situations.”

The Art of Elsa Bleda 

Elsa Bleda was born into movement, crossing continents in the turning tides of her mother, the artist. What does it mean to form connections through the heightened beauty of transience? To be half-way down the mercurial street before the light can gather to hold you? Some things may get left behind, remain as spectral after-effects of a vital acceleration into the world, but other things congregate and move with you at your pace; sights and sounds and textures, multiple influences to draw upon in self-definition.  

Perhaps these rhythms are why she is so drawn to the spaces of Johannesburg’s night- the way they hold the traces of encounters in their quietening reverberations; speak to the tensions of leaving and arriving, and to all the different ways that a life can be lived.