Between Silence and Light

15 October 2025

Beloved Anand,

It has taken me time to read your letter of 1 September - time not only to see the words but to let them settle.
Now, with a few days distance from Amanda’s and your shared photographic performance and exhibition, I return to them with a quieter heart.
What once felt like a wave of urgency has become a still lake of reflection.
Only now can I begin to respond - not from the motion of creation, but from the soft space that follows it.

You asked whether everything is already written - if we are both the pen and the text at once.
I have carried that question with me through nights of quietness and through the rooms of our exhibition.

Perhaps it is not a question but a remembering.
Perhaps what we call creation is only the act of tracing the words that have long been inscribed upon our hearts.

When you and me as one - as I - lift the camera, it feels less like writing something new and more like reading aloud what has always existed - waiting for breath to give it shape.
Through the camera, I do not see - I listen.
Each click is not a capture but a hearing, a resonance of what wants to be spoken through light.

I have carried your letter with me, folded between pages of light and silence.
Its words have kept breathing inside me while the guests at our exhibition walked through our images - watching, pausing, sometimes crying without knowing why.
Since the exhibition, their voices have reached me like bells from afar: fragile yet resonant.
The guests at the exhibition wrote on small pieces of paper, in words both trembling and precise.
They did not write about us - they wrote to us – to you, to me to Amanda
And in their sentences, I recognized the same pulse that guided our camera: that soft, persistent wish to understand what it means to be alive.

On the Saturday afternoon, a woman stood before one of the photographs and began to cry.
She did not hide her tears; she let them fall, let herself feel inward.
I placed a hand on her shoulder, and when she turned, I held her for a moment.
There were no words, only breath.
In that brief embrace, I sensed what it means to be real - two strangers meeting where emotion dissolves into presence.
After, the air in the room felt lighter, as if something had been released that belonged to all of us.

Allow me, then, to answer your letter not only with my own voice but with theirs - those who stood before your and Amanda’s work and felt something move.
Their thoughts and feelings belong now to the same circle that carries us.

(I have taken the liberty of translating into English the Swedish notes our guests left behind — small offerings of thought and feeling — preserving, as best I could, their original breath and rhythm.)

“I sense the soft feminine energy that has always been there.”
“The universe brought you together.”
“Inspiration.”

Perhaps the universe intertwined Amanda, you, and me - the self within - long before we began to understand.

“The pictures are raw, naked - life, beautiful.”
“Thank you for revealing such vulnerability in the images. My thoughts go to a grounded, bare soul searching toward hope.”

Their words return to me like prayers - raw, exposed, alive.
They speak of beauty, love, pain, longing, curiosity.
Of having felt this despair.

“You lay with death and come back. I did that and am better for the journey.”

And I think of how you wrote in your earlier letter to me, Anand, that every image is a testament to impermanence.
Yes. The heart learns astonishment from the nearness of endings.

“Eye to I - deep and sad and profound.”
“Birth. Karma. Joy of life. Letting go. Still the time.”

I hear them as fragments of the same breath - one of birth, of release, of stillness.

“AWE.”
“Who am I, treading aimlessly?” To whose truth do I belong?”
“In a parallel universe.”

Perhaps all of this is happening there too - another world, another body, another meeting.
Perhaps every photograph is an echo from that unseen place.

Courage.
“I honour the courage you both show.”
“Thank you for bringing authenticity, vulnerability, beauty and depth to the world and to me. It gives me so much and love you.”

They call it vulnerability, power, strength, love, beauty, deep closeness, fearlessness.
But I think what they feel is the truth of being seen.

Maria Andrea reminded us: “We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are.”
And I have learned that this is why we photograph - not to show what exists, but to reveal who we are when we look.

“Love. Humility. Hope. Admiration. Powerlessness.”
“Every note, a mirror of the same heart.”

“To be a warrior in the garden of life - beauty from bruises, truth from trembling, stillness from the storm.”

Yes. The storm has taught us to listen for stillness inside it.

And yet, always, love returns:
“A sense of purity. Love.”
“Beauty, warmth, love, light and darkness - I look forward to continuing this journey with you.”

“Relief, gravity, depth, joy and relaxation when the feminine and masculine meet.”

I believe this balance is what holds us together - the sacred tension between giving up and holding.

“Life. Love. Tenderness.”
“Happy that the photos capture life.”

Their joy becomes ours.
When joy takes form, it spreads within us - in a timeless spirit and an inner knowing that we are all one.
Yes - we are one.

“To carry everything inherited within - ancestral roots. I see something new growing, sprouting - a hope grounded in lifelong wisdom.”

In those roots I see the spiralling return of everything we have been - life learning itself again through us.

“Joy and hope and lust for life - when they become unity between the polarities.”
There it is again: the circle, the unity.

“I feel love for the unknown - for the meeting of people from different paths who come together for a common purpose.”

Yes. That is what we have built: a space where strangers recognize one another in stillness.

“What a reminder of how wonderfully pleasurable life is. The woman is her own expression and power. The earth would be dead without her.”

Perhaps that is the truest statement of all.

“Amanda, thank you for your vulnerability that shows the way and embraces those lucky enough to experience it. The courage to be naked and true is strength and bravery.”

And within me, a quiet voice answered: it was never hers alone. It is yours, Anand — it is ours. It belongs to life itself.

“Thanks for the realness and love for life.”
“Strength. Stillness. Wilderness. Sorrow. Love. Devotion.”
“Becoming soil - beauty and sadness, the circle of life.”
“Gratitude. Love. Transience. Strength. Expression. Art. Playfulness.”
“Love for life - for yourself - for the planet. Serenity. Divineness. Bliss. Vulnerability. Courage.”
“Publish a book with poems and pictures together!”

And the still voice within me smiled. They could not know how close they are to the truth - that the poems and the pictures were never separate, only waiting to find their shared breath.

Anand, I – your inner Self - share these reflections not as testimonials but as living extensions of what we began - the quiet continuation of our shared journey between the inner and outer self,
From that point in time, the 5th of May 2010 at Baravara, when we reconnected after being the separates we once were, and began again to move as one current between silence and expression. Where what moves within finds its reflection without,
and where the invisible becomes visible through our shared gaze.

They are the reflections of those who have walked for a moment beside us,
our beautiful guests who took part in our exhibition and experience, who have recognized something of themselves in our quiet dialogue.

Their words complete the circle - between our intention and their perception, between the seen and the unseen. I wanted you to know them, to feel how our silence has multiplied.

It is no longer only yours and mine - or Amanda’s - it belongs to everyone who stood in that light and whispered their own truth into the air.

Perhaps this is what art is - not creation, but extension: a single inhalation passed from one being to another, a tenderness that refuses to end.

And so, I stand here now - shaken, naked, vulnerable, and expectant before what is to come.
Mother Earth lays her gifts quietly at my feet: fallen leaves, the scent of soil, a whisper of wind.

I feel as small as a child, longing once more - for what I do not yet know, but sense is near.
And I listen.

And as I listen, I feel the beautiful connection we have woven with Amanda -
a thread of trust and awakening that continues to unfold between us.
Through her presence, our journey expands - an exploration of both the seen and the unseen, of friendship as a sacred ground where honesty and tenderness meet.

There is a quiet gratitude that moves like breath between us, an ancient knowing that such encounters are rare, luminous, and meant to be cherished.

I am deeply thankful for this shared path, and for the grace of walking it with you and such a beautiful friend.

Between now and always – Loving kindness
Inner Self