cleaved.1

Cleaved is the first piece of art that we made together.

Melinda: I have a piece of slate that the river brought to me a few years ago, around the time that I started to consider the sort of intimate relationship I would like to be a part of.  Unlike much of the slate that I have gathered from the river, which can be thin and brittle and shatters when I reach for it, this piece is quite strong.   It has a perfect crack down the middle of it and the two pieces can fit firmly together or when they are side by side, the space between them is so elegant and beautifully formed.  Even when they are seperate,  the space between unifies them.  They belong together and seem to symbolise my favourite quote:

“Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky”. – Rainer Maria Rilke

A couple of weeks after Steve and I had met, I had a bad bicycle accident and was covered in bruises.  Steve sent me some get well wishes, a bottle of Arnica tablets and a red rose through the post.  The day before, I had been trying to photograph the pieces of slate, because I felt that they symbolised the connection that was forming between he and I.

When I received the package in the post, I felt cared about and cared for. A feeling I haven’t had for a very, very long time.  I realised that I have been shaken, moved, touched to my core by him.  I thought first of the word riven – to wrench open or tear apart or to pieces.  But that was too painful. Yet something had been broken open or broken apart.  But in a very subtle way.  The way the root of a tree that has been patiently growing down into a crack in a granite boulder, one day grows an extra millimetre and gently cleaves it in two.

To cleave – which means both to divide or split, and also to adhere loyally and unwaveringly.

I knew that the rose petals belonged with the slate.  I put them on a piece of white silk, photographed it and emailed the photo and my thoughts to Steve.