Anne Bachelier // Soulmates II

—UPCOMING SHOW DATES—

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 31 @ 8p — ARTSPACE SOFT OPENING
155 South Hibbert
Mesa, AZ 85210

**Novel Excerpt**

Her legs and her movement shuffled like a wildfire in a dead winter. I knew I loved her the moment I met her. You know that impulse when someone just understands you and you haven’t really told him or her anything about you… eh, maybe you don’t. But it’s been known to happen. Love has been known to happen. True love. And if you know what I’m talking about, you know it’s pretty rare and pretty wonderful. You know it’s like a dream that disappears the very moment you understand it is one. A dream that most think they experience based on what the chemistry of their brain has told them, or their institutions, friends, time, even death… but this was different, she was different. She was my counterpoint… beyond all the infinite possibilities of time and space, we’ve found each other, and it was nothing like I’d ever imagined. It was not simply a fitted puzzle piece. Most people, from what I’ve gathered, go their entire lives living inside other people’s nightmares. Most people never get over their past. Most people go on living pretending their life is always just about to happen, all the while preventing them from ever meeting that person just over that hill, inviting them into their existence—assuming they were to exist in the same fragment and duration of being. But not her. And not me. We just so happened to be in the very same place at the very same moment in time. We did the work, peeled back the layers of our familial skin. We’d become our true selves, which wasn’t an ordinary thing. This was something special. Something people write about in unbelievable love stories. We had this kind of love others only dream about…

Her name was Aya. They called her Ay for short. We worked together, in fact, she was the one who brought me on. I didn’t know much about her then, other than our few exchanges, my observations, and talk in the office. But I instantly felt something for her. And she felt the same, though kept it professionally secret.

Aya was powerful yet still exuded grace. She carried herself sweetly in social garment. So much so you’d get the feeling she might be easily trampled, bending to demands, but she wasn’t. As I said, she was powerful, and terribly smart. She didn’t land herself in the position she was by being recumbent and socially submissive. And she had great intuition, as well as rigidity when it came to her profession. She could read into a person and know how their intentions would band with the agencies defense network. She was the linking web in control of security operations, adding the appropriate faces and giving them names. She was tactful and very well spoken, too. Her clash of social and professional personalities made me imagine her as two people. And I was drawn to both of them. I knew both of them. It was her… it was me.

Surprisingly, this never came up again—but as far as I knew, she was Native. She looked it, too. Long black cascading hair, mostly bunched up at work. Light thin chocolate skin and deep brown eyes like a sparkling well after a heavy rain. Her ancestors were amongst a small group of people that will go down in history as the most remarkable of the human race. More profound than the most cunning of our scientists. More beautiful than the most talented of our artists. More pure than the paragon of thinkers and sages that triggered our religions. This was her blood. What she carried with her. And though time and civilization had taken its toll on just about everyone and everything, she still had visible refractions of this honest way about her, draped within. She was pure, as pure as one could be living in such a jaded zeitgeist as this.

But who’s to say, this was where we were at in the course of our existence. We were given life, and all we did was run with it. We didn’t look or examine too closely, we didn’t ask, we just ran. We ran as fast as we possibly could, and this is where we ended up. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t just or unjust. It was just the way it was. I suppose a belief as this made living more bearable, but equally not so in the same respect. It was that feeling when you look at something and it disgusts you so much because it feels so terribly wrong and bad and dishonest, but the other side of that, the other side of you secretly knows nature doesn’t think or believe in the same way a human does. Nature simply just exists. It reacts and grows things and destroys them without any explanation. Without being held trail. Without being held accountable. And this is the sad truth about perception and belief about what is right and what is wrong.

But back on point, love—a love like this… a love between two tiny vessels of energy—no matter how fucked up they’ve grown up through these embeddings of environmental miscongruencies, a love as this will always exist. People will still find a way and prevail, even under the worst conditions and regimes. Love will still be present, even if every apple in the orchard is rotting. Love will find a way.

And our love, Aya’s and mine, had lived many times before, and here, now, in the refuge of our future and our eternal selves, we once again examine the difficulties that lie ahead. There is no perfect love. There is no perfect time. There is no such thing as perfection. Though now that I’ve spoken of this, I have only told you the beginning of an untimely tale that begins the same as it ends… in this very moment, on this very day, between two very unordinary creatures.

Soulmates II (visit here for Part I: Genesis Journals: August 2018)

lies, lies, the cat that holds the secret doll.
the egg from the magic ship.
it is the question that destroys lovers.
love is not a victory march—
it’s a cold and breaking hallelujah…
from a creaking and stoned
vision.

the cat lies and spreads its wings
as the angel loses her rhythm
remaining stoic in prayer. she’s never done this before.
neither have they.
the dark cat. the red cat. one of which
holding a sea of glisters in a lantern.
one of which must decide.
one is deciding but was never
decided, and one too weak
and frightened to understand the
consequence of the decision.

the red cat runs and hides.
the black cat chews off his tail.

the two of whom,
soulmating, and strung out on the next,
live eternal summers dreaming and understanding
grief is the more constant parable of life.
the treasure of their lost world must be reconciled.
they have this perfect love between them that
just as perfectly has been distorted and digested
by time’s ugly perpendicular wind.
the grandfather chime and its wind.

but where could love vacate?—so fruitful and misplaced.
how could it be so… frigid,
and unknowing?
so crippled beside itself?

this world, too strange—too greatly so.
just enough beyond the curb to recognize the chaos
slipping through the periodical void;
the silent admission of nature.
when you ask for things, they never come
as the things you ask for.
the emotion of them like roadkill, anthropomorphic—

the queen is angered and relentless.
she sends the hive on a chase.
honey is lost.
honey was lost.
honey was always lost.

I tell the same story over and over, hoping
by mere will it will change our reality.
it never does—but this never stops us.
nothing ever could. I wouldn’t allow it…
to get the best of us. the best of her.
that wheelchair—her brine. her liquor cabinet. her final prayer.
we will go on living and fumble until the unpeeled-out end.

this cruel clock.
such a beautiful ship.
this master, in control of nothing—
except us.

we will end up somewhere.
profound. unusual and beyond recognition.
mistakenly alone,
searching for something
we’ve already had.
searching for someone
we’ve already met.
searching, mistakenly,
for each other.

by LORIN DREXLER

Anne Bachelier (via http://annebachelier.blogspot.com)

Anne Bachelier is a French artist born in 1979. She graduated from the School of Fine Arts of La Seyne Sur Mer, at first she worked for Dassault designing the decoration for Falcon airplanes. Very early, She decided to pursue a career as a professional artist with which she became internationally renowned very fast. Her work is present in prestigious galleries all around the world as well as in renowned group exhibitions. Crossing the doors of the imagination and discovering a dreamlike world inhabited by fantastic creatures in magic and surprising realms that remind us of those fairy tales that made us dream so much when we were children, Anne Bachelier works on metamorphoses and chimeras, depicted in scenes often inspired by the medieval world with singular beings bathed by a marvelous and cathartic light. The whole composition is done with great finesse and a perfect mastery of the techniques. Her work has been exhibited in several private and collective exhibitions in Lyon, Brussels, and Paris.

What is Gen Society?

Gen Society is an art space blog for visual art and creative writing collaborations, and other randomizations. Hosted by writer and musician, Lorin Drexler, this online venue is an expressive experience for those interested in the world of the arts. It is a literary journey through the hearts and minds of contemporary artists in practice and a reflection of those that have long passed.

If you’re an artist and would like to submit your work in consideration to collaborate with Gen Society, please click below: