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This little booklet announced itself one day out of the blue when I was struggling with writing something completely different. I needed a strong metaphor for life and its cycles and the image of a river came up as great candidate. But however hard I tried to put that into words, it kept falling short of my expectations. It either became too complicated and contrived, or too obvious and almost trite.

I was about to give up on the whole idea when - quite by itself - a paragraph rolled off my keyboard onto the screen that simply described the very first moments of the life-cycle of a river, when the water evaporates from the ocean into the sky. I liked what I saw, even if I didn’t really know where it came from, so I decided to follow this thread to see where it would lead me.

In as many days, 12 short paragraphs appeared, written almost without my involvement; I was just doing the typing.

Once it was done, I had this prose poem in my hands and it seemed to stand on itself. It didn’t need further explanation; it did not need to be tied to the other texts I was working on. It contained its own story and all the messages implied therein.

The illustrations are my attempt to visualise and evoke the atmosphere of each chapter for those who are more visually inclined. Having written the text in 12 days, it took me another 12 months to produce the paintings, but now that it’s done, I’m very happy I stuck with this project.

I hope you will be glad I did so, too.

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