Windows to the Pyramids
an interactive website and story
((partiel de TICE web + graphisme - M. de Brito-Parente, UPEC, 2023
S. Idris, 32200044, Régime dérogatoire))
L2 LLCER anglais - 2022/23
S. Idris
Partiel de TICE - voir document word attaché
Toutes images prises et retouchées par moi (S. Idris)
Texte également de moi (S. Idris)
:)
I find it fascinating how the smallest circumstances leads one to leave home. And I mean that in vastly different ways. Home can be considered just about anything that sets your mind to rest. But where does a restless mind remain ?
(click on image)
The outside world shines a peculiar light on this mind of mine; they act as celestial bodies to one another, reflecting each other's glow - or eclipsing one another. In the ceaselessly playful game in which they interact, my physical perception is subservient to whichever haze is creeping up on me at that moment. That can be a problem. If the magnetic field of what I’m trying to grab is stronger than the one of the tangible reality, then I might see an image recklessly shedding itself of all truthfulness. And thus I am enthralled by a dream, twirling inside of a pleasant demolition of all things known. That is something I both command at will and am overtaken by. No matter the steps taken to get there, however, I gently lay my hands on the reflections my own body gives me.
I used to know a girl named Dorothea. I loved her very much, and she became a part of me. I wonder if people see her in me the way I see her in my mirror.
(click on image)
One day, Dorothea and I went to some place I have since forgotten. Or rather, the place itself is not important: it’s what it represents. I left for a few minutes to complete a task I have forgotten as well. When I came back, she said something in my eye changed. Had it ? Something in me had changed indeed; a slight variation of the heart. Maybe it was palpable in my organs, and she sensed it somehow ? Or maybe she saw it in my eyes. They say eyes are the window of the soul, after all. That is the most likely hypothesis; because as we were leaving, an old lady told us we had the same eyes. All I had done that day was take a part of her into my own. I deeply longed for her to be a me inside of me, a portable haven I could retreat to when I was blinded by existence. I wanted to stretch myself across a continent, inhabit and be inhabited by so much; but if anyone were to hold an invisible string pulling it all together, I figured she would be the one to do it best. Some days, I notice her shadow instead of mine.
I’m the kind of person that never pays attention to my surroundings enough; but if something catches my eye, everything else melts into a blur. Tonight the sun looked pretty. I wanted to take a picture.
(click on image)
When I was younger, I tried making up my own language. I looked at the way the signs and letters and words around me became some shapeless sludge and tried replicating it. Obviously that didn’t work, because the sludge obeyed no rules applicable to modern linguistics. All it would repeatedly tell me was that I was an ant, or other small bug. I never liked bugs, so that was a pet peeve of mine; what higher divine power was trying to convince me of my animal nature ? Why me, when plenty other men in this damned Earth needed that reminder more than me ? But one day it clicked. I laid on my back like a lonesome dog, on the roof of some fresh new face’s house. I looked at the moon and asked for a question. I couldn’t discern a face, but an apple fell in an orchard nearby. If the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, then all I could be was the sun.
I love taking trains; I’ve told myself that I would take them for as long as I had somewhere to go. I do wonder if I don’t sometimes make up destinations so that I can carry it out, like a warm summer night too perfect to end.
(click on image)
On one of those perfect warm summer nights, I scribbled on a nearby wood plank to never lose trust in my allies. How odd, to think of war on a sweet escape of a moment. Is man always prepared to fight, some animal instinct hard to shake off ? Or is it that for once, I had something worth fighting for ? When I looked around at the state of my world on fire, there were some tell-tale signs someone was there before me. Kind of like how the pyramids have sparked many myths and legends. The pyramids and the northern aurora borealis have one thing in common : a crushing sense of awe when struck by their sight. A threaded reminder of our own humanity that leads me to believe I speak for it as a whole by using such broad statements; as though I was a popular figure in collective imagination, like the hat man in nightmares around the globe. That’s something I haphazardly find on every street corner; and I don’t think I’d lose it again if you asked me to.