THE SKY WAS THE LIMIT

At the doctor’s office, she reads: “To be able to wait […] proves a big heart endowed with a richness of patience, never in a hurried heat, never passionate. Only by crossing the wide expanses of time one reaches the center of opportunity. The crutch of time holds up more than the iron club of Hercules.”*

Mostly, it’s quiet. Windows opening and closing, curtains, vents, and a polyrhythmic ticking of instruments testify to an inner movement.
Routines play out in the House of Patience.
Particular care is taken to ensure that everything is right and nothing goes off track.

She thinks that an eternal repetition of the same can be observed particularly well here. Here, glances are directed upward, into the sky. Clouds rise.
When will the waiting come to an end?
Not a thing has moved still, is she moving along with it?
The cover above her head resonates and grips at her low-tonal body.
Patience has never been easy, she has been practicing it for weeks.
She deftly massages her temples. This is how she looks after her senstrument.

Her chewing gum fades, and is sent retrograde.
Can patience be measured?
Hercules is blinking up there now, sometimes she is disappointed. Nothing new ever seems to happen, something strange perhaps in the midst of this ephemeral movement in the sky.
Are the planetary orbits waiting lines? Does patience reach their limits?
The guard closes the view, silently steals her questions. She knows you can’t hear her sounds up there.
The curtain falls, time applauds long-suffering patience.

*Quote (unofficial translation) from: Balthasar Gracian, Handorakel und die Kunst der Weltklugheit (original: Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia, 1647), Stuttgart 1986.

UTE WALDHAUSEN, born in the GDR, lives in Berlin and in the mountains, explores bodily articulations and works as a performance artist.