(My darling,

I am not used to the quiet. The promised future was meant to be loud, luxurious, bright and fun.

I am not used to my night visitors. They leave marks in lint. In the morning the maid comes and they disappear. The one who balanced the longest is the one that got the key and I believe I will have to meet him soon. I still don’t like to get up early.

The winter refuses to leave. All of the things I was meant to do I have put aside. The waiting takes up all of my time. I am not used to the quiet but still I am still. The river is frozen again. Here, the nature is stronger than me. I don’t like the cold so I never go outside. Instead, she comes in and decorates to her liking.

I used to be beautiful, remember? I tell myself that I have more character now. That the years only added to my girl charm that you seemed to love but now I wonder if maybe I was just unattainable and difficult to shape. I guess we could never meet half way. As a sign of my good will I now color the windows in your favorite red.

The other day I had a visitor. She asked about me but I refused to see her. The gardener opened the door. I had nothing to wear so I staid hidden. She was stubborn and refused to leave. For the rest of the week I could hear her click. When she left I took pleasure in the sound of breaking ice. The gardeners go fishing and I continue to construct the confusion and stubborn stillness in beautiful grey. This lasts for a little bit and then again the quiet enters. I realize that I am old and that nothing has changed.

I am a monument of nothingness. I was/ I am a beautiful mistake.

If the girl comes again I decided I would let her see all of me. Maybe we will play.)

In the super garden with the area of thousand square meters I can live up to my ideal life (Jing Jin Cit.)

Jing Jin was promised that one day it would become a great city. A mega-idea, a mega-garden on a mega-scale, the promise was either too big to be fulfilled or it just falls under a category - it was never meant to be.

Hundred miles from Beijing, Jing Jin City is a luxury resort town but it is largely uninhabited. The city is maintained in a perfect shape by a small army of gardeners and guards who also make up the majority of the city’s permanent population. Their activity maintains the illusion of the city being functional but the Sisyphean nature of their labor is more than apparent.

Maybe A* woke up one of the gardeners or guards that watch over the estate. She entered a place inhabited by dreams, governed by illogicality and absence. This is what interests her and continues to follow her photography. She prefers things that are left behind, things that are monumental just because they stand for a promise, stand for an idea, they stand and you wonder why. There is no logic in the existence of this estate yet there is such beauty.

A* entered the space twice in one year and left her mark. She left behind her a small brick wall, grass, tiles and glass. All of the things she left behind disappeared, they became transparent, interlocking with the structure of the houses and in the end became the house.

Everything here waits. A* leaves and nothing of what she did stands. It is eaten by time, by the strong and fearful emptiness, the monster of hope that creates the world eyes will never get to see.

What we get to see resembles a fairy tale. A hole in time like the one Alice fell through, a castle without roots standing between earth and sky, a dream state before the Sleeping Beauty awakes. The beautiful grey in grains, the document of the world ruled and ruined by itself.

*Andi Schmied
andischmied.com