Hutong life, Beijing 2013

“I look up to the starry skies and see the resemblance of what is happening to us down here. Stars await to collide and burst, evidently, once again.”

My world crashed after a break-up and the decision of leaving the company I co-founded. Feeling lost from the reality I created through the identity of work. Growing up as a refugee, with the unexplored territory of self and the context I found myself in, had me feeling even more lost of home.

I picked up writing with recurring subjects on language, ego and identity.

At a coffee shop in Stockholm, overhearing an old sailor rich stories with his granddaughter inspired me to travel alone for the first time.

There and then I decided to visit my artist friend Carl Nyman, Gabbi and their daughter Mila in Beijing, a well-traveled family in the midst of their adventures in China.

Two weeks on the trip I understood that they are not together anymore. And it struck me that I was writing about them all along.

"We seem to forget that magic do happen in a certain time and space as two energies collide in joy, as time pass we desperately want to cling on to the same experience that has once been. 

Like any explosion, it evolves and expands in different directions and forms.

I look up to the starry skies and see the resemblance of what is happening to us down here. Stars await to collide and burst, evidently, once again."

— Soheill Deriss