Somewhere Down the River
by Liu Hsin-Ying, Kuala Lumpur, 2018
To fill is an act of painting, direct, touching, and substantiating.
A red line finds its path on the skin, running along with it; it orbits the contours of this person, the body’s frontier.
The dashboard camera captures the world outside, available to the eye. She carries her mortal flesh and moves forward endlessly in this world. As she fails to keep her eyes forward for a moment, the image vanishes.
She is filling the shape of a human; she has crossed the feminine boundaries—her vagina and bosom. She comes to be aware of these boundaries. She shuns away, perplexed, and stays behind. She has no idea of which set of boundaries defines her existence fully.
She keeps going in the boundless universe, her journey parallel to the external world.
*
And she goes on in the endless course,
on and on
Sitting down before a lake so deep with its bottom invisible, she sees two mountains in front of the lake and cannot tell which is the reflection.
Her eyes are filled with the floating mountains and the sea.
The grass beneath her sways gently in the breeze.
Beside her lies a massive, red and acute triangle, and the shape keeps growing taller.
She gazes at the women passing by, picturing the destiny underlying their similar shapes.
On and on—
The uterus stays afloat in its plumpness between her legs.
Her lower tract swelling, she can only fall down.
On and on—
Her strong body keeps changing its shape,
as if oblivious of what she used to look like.
And the journey goes on
Through a grove,
A meadow,
Some burrows,
And a windy tribe.
It goes on and on—
