Ánima

On the afternoon of June 5th, 2006, I awaited expectantly for the sun to set. Nonetheless, the converging clouds foretold an ordinary end of the day. No ambulance-light reds. No deep purples mixed with flaming oranges. This was no eschatological rehearsal. Not at all. Peterborough, New Hampshire, has been under the siege of constant rain. Online predictions had 8:23 PM as the time for dusk to arrive. 8:21 PM brought shy traces of the approaching night. Sort of. Darkness was to arrive slowly, I learned. Much later than I imagined—closer to 9:30 PM, I would say. Pitch black would not paint the evening until about 10:30 PM, I think, because there was no way I could have matched these transitions to specific times. I took on a pilgrimage without a watch. From dusk to dawn I would walk uninterruptedly on the paths within MacDowell. The geography I had set myself to traverse was meant to forgo any references to a map, that is, there was no destination to arrive to. Without articulating it, I intended to collapse space within time.

Guests who make themselves too comfortable run the risk of not being invited again. My journey into the night began as a casual visit into that period of the day I had greatly feared as a child. Growing up in the Caribbean entailed making sure I had a bedmate who would look after me when the lightbulb would go out in my room. Even then, nightmares would start playing like a black and white silent movie. Otherworldly beings would have a feast in my quarters and they would make sure to include me in their plots. At MacDowell, I attired as a ghost. White pants and shirt. A lit candle at first. Then a lantern to protect the flame from the winds. Once sent off, I would eventually was on my own through paths I had befriended during the day, but that when the night enveloped the area, would present themselves as total strangers. It became clear to me that any information accumulated during previous trips would no longer be applicable to this one. The after dark hours had claimed the woods I was in for their own purpose. In some instances, for rest, in others to free creatures and forces that would only emerge when very little was visible to the eye. I could see as far as a few steps ahead. This was much like a conscious practice on life.

Avoiding talking was easy to submit to as a self-imposed vow. Yet, traveling nonstop was simply not sustainable. I needed brief pauses to comfort myself after some of the sporadic sounds that would come to surround me, among them a screeching owl, as well as other beings I could not identify. I prayed not to cross paths with a coyote, and I had no resources in place to deal with a bear, in the event we came face-to-face. I had heard how making noises helped, and how useful it was to project oneself big, larger than one was. In any case, now that I think about it, I was at the mercy of this mighty creature. Bieng a stone’s throw from the cottages planted in the woods would not provide an escape. Emotions on the road fluctuated. I would say too that they would flow from one to the other stirred by the winds. There was sadness when loneliness hit me. The same sadness morphed into fear at the sight of a shaking bush or at the feeling of something following my steps.

 Any more recollections of that time have faded for me. I am attempting to reconstruct this narrative almost 20 years later. Tonight, it is 2025, running soon into 2026, and I am writing from my bedroom in the South Bronx. If anything, I have now very little fear of the dark and I have learned to wrestle with the scary characters in my nightmares quite skillfully. More than the night, it is the dawn I am working with at present. That is the hour when the night has packed up to go to the other side of the planet and the day shows up like an ominous presence. At MacDowell however, the terrors were mostly tangible ones and I was a light bearer through time. In the woods I was looking forward to the morning not realizing that the darkest period of the night is when the day is about to crack open. I have heard this on more than one occasion, but thought of it as mediocre poetic cliché. But let me tell you that this is actually true. It was for me during my walk in Peterborough.

When the first glimmer of the morning star appeared on the horizon, I was exhausted to the very core. The lantern I held was by then ready to swap places with the Sun. I found my way back home at MacDowell in a daze, half-drunk from the experience, into my cottage and into my bed, where I crashed like a falling meteor. A Mennonite resident had engaged the vision I kindled through the night and written a poem which I hope to locate someday or night. Gisela Insuaste recorded the initial leg of the of this journey through photographs. The remaining parts of my pilgrimage are blurry memories, and I am gladly to let them continue to reside there.

 Ánima © Nicolás Dumit Estévez

In Anima I embark on a journey through the night to a location not defined by a departure or an arrival point, but to an obscure territory, a geography mapped in time. This exercise addresses issues of darkness and light, taps into the conceptual realm of non-object based art, and embodies the ephemerality of performance art. This action took place in a forest as a ritual though the night.

 Anima began at the sundown of June 3, 2006 at MacDowell, Peterborough, New Hampshire