This artwork is a stop-motion animation showing a woman getting on the train and off again. My reading of the poem is the soundtrack of the animation. The artwork is based on a poem I wrote entitled “Reincarnation as a Human”.
I decided to use animation to illustrate the main point in the poem: How Karma does not help improve your next life if you are born in Myanmar. In this piece, I use the circular train as a metaphor for hope: We have hope, the train is moving. Except for the fact, that the train is circular and keeps going to the same place whenever you travel. The train keeps going to the same place whether it is the past or the present. We don’t have future; we cannot say ‘one day’. We only have today to enjoy the moment.
We, people born in Myanmar, never have a chance to live like a human being. We try our whole life to get freedom, to get human rights, to feel safe, etc. Although our wish is not fulfilled, we never give up. We keep trying, trying, trying until we die.
Excerpt of the poem:
“Even though they keep being reincarnated in human form on the trains.
Have you ever seen hopes brighter than mid-summer?
Hopes are a stinging pain that pricks, and forces shut the eyes.
Mascara is sad but does not cry.
Blood stops flowing back to the heart.
Some people get swapped midway.
A large volume of sweat pumps out from the laceration.
And floods the whole train.
Sweat pumps out when people greet each other.
It does when they wave goodbye.
At the dinner table, someone’s sweat splatters onto someone else’s plate.
It pumps out when they gossip.
It pumps from the mouths when they kiss.
The pumping doesn’t stop even during sex. It only pauses for a minute when they see the badly-made-up face.
Of the news anchor on the state-owned TV.
They would laugh a bit.
And then start pumping sweat again.
It would go on until they reincarnate again as humans.”
This artwork is a stop-motion animation showing a woman getting on the train and off again. My reading of the poem is the soundtrack of the animation. The artwork is based on a poem I wrote entitled “Reincarnation as a Human”.
I decided to use animation to illustrate the main point in the poem: How Karma does not help improve your next life if you are born in Myanmar. In this piece, I use the circular train as a metaphor for hope: We have hope, the train is moving. Except for the fact, that the train is circular and keeps going to the same place whenever you travel. The train keeps going to the same place whether it is the past or the present. We don’t have future; we cannot say ‘one day’. We only have today to enjoy the moment.
We, people born in Myanmar, never have a chance to live like a human being. We try our whole life to get freedom, to get human rights, to feel safe, etc. Although our wish is not fulfilled, we never give up. We keep trying, trying, trying until we die.
Excerpt of the poem:
“Even though they keep being reincarnated in human form on the trains.
Have you ever seen hopes brighter than mid-summer?
Hopes are a stinging pain that pricks, and forces shut the eyes.
Mascara is sad but does not cry.
Blood stops flowing back to the heart.
Some people get swapped midway.
A large volume of sweat pumps out from the laceration.
And floods the whole train.
Sweat pumps out when people greet each other.
It does when they wave goodbye.
At the dinner table, someone’s sweat splatters onto someone else’s plate.
It pumps out when they gossip.
It pumps from the mouths when they kiss.
The pumping doesn’t stop even during sex. It only pauses for a minute when they see the badly-made-up face.
Of the news anchor on the state-owned TV.
They would laugh a bit.
And then start pumping sweat again.
It would go on until they reincarnate again as humans.”
