the origin of pain
“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”
Terry Pratchett
It is a story of love, grief and wonder inspired to the mythical mother of many wonderful monsters of Greek myths, Echidna.
Echidna has a generous snake body and a royal coiffure crowned with a red Stegosaurus pins.
Echidna’s land has seen a cruel pesticide bombardment that led to the sudden death of her first offspring.
“And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief.”
William Cullen Bryant
She was pushed towards healing before she was ready, simply redoubling her burden.
Threatening to starve herself to death, she was ripping the sky into pieces in vain.
When this tragedy happened, She was carrying an egg inside herself that the divine pain brought into light.
The Chimera was born.
The tears of the Echidna have nurtured the soil and grown roots.
Chimera’s room has walls made of grief and love. Growing on grief and love, she could hold her three heads high, even in tears, even shattered – wondering what is behind that wall?
That burning sense of curiosity has brought them to the perimeter of the Traumlands game.
We are all connected. […] It was not compassion alone that let Chimera help them: She had to manifest ferocity with that compassion, a fierceness that enabled swift and sustained action.
And “she had to, once again, be willing to be with and surrender again to her own pain – her own grief for the creatures, for herself, for the world – before she could act effectively.”
Joanne Cacciatore
Animation created in collaboration with Mike Stuart.
