(cont.) “When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait to move north, not because I didn’t like my family, but because I wanted to live where the trees turned color. Bright red and orange, like the pictures I saw.”
“To me, these colors were unfamiliar. As I thought about seeing them in person, I knew I would believe in something new and omnipotent. These colors were evidence of the divine.”
“Looking back, I now see that there was plenty of evidence of the divine where I lived, but it was too familiar to notice.”
“I could only see the gods — or their work — from a distance.”
“That’s how I felt for a long time. I was always moving to new places, immersing myself into the magic until — as it always does — the magic wore off and I would have to search for it somewhere else.”
“Then I learned that the outside world is a mirror of the one that exists inside of me, and vice versa.”
“I stopped running. I didn’t need to go anywhere ever again.”
“Like the trees in the fall, I was preparing to die. I’m not frightened of death — or life — anymore. It’s a cycle, right? Our bodies go back to the earth and we sleep until — in some form or another — we’re reborn. It’s so simple, the only thing I can’t believe is that it took me a lifetime to figure out.”
Pictures of Fort Tryon Park taken on September 24, 2016. Text excerpted from The #Gods Project: A Training Manual (Section 2, “Interviews with the Institutionalized.”)
