THE SKY IS MY LAND

THE SKY IS MY LAND I could stare into the evening sky for hours since my early childhood watching its mountains, seas and bays, distant villages. These celestial landscapes reminded me of a painting featuring an idyllic landscape that hung on the wall in the round frame at home. So I stared into the sky till it got dark, and when I looked down after that everything seemed to be insignificant and dark. We had no TV set then, and could not travel over the world. The sky was my promised land. My parents began to read adventure novels to me when I was quite young. I was especially impressed by statements like these: “and I waited for the heaven to take me”, or “your mother is already in the heaven.” When the character of the novel exclaimed: “let heaven’s thunder strike you!”, or when sailors were asking the heaven to help them out during the storm, I was overwhelmed with holy awe. Phrases like these excited my imagination and fed my dreams of the heaven. Many years passed, and one day I found myself in Tibet. Standing on the top of a mountain 4600 meters above the sea level, I realized that the sky is not over my head, or, to be more exact, it is not only over my head, that it is around me, and I am in the heaven already. I remembered my childhood contemplation and thoughts about the heaven. With those thoughts in my mind I painted my series of Tibet watercolors. Tania Antoshina, April 2008.