Taut Tangos

Standing before the bleak gate, I saw no sign nor heard noise that would betray a hint of commotion within. Without, the night held in its airs a sort of agitated yet limp festivity: behind me, in an inner court crowned by a fountain, young men and women wandered vaguely, stirred into Brownian motion by spirits and sexual tension.

The ghost of sensual grace lingered there all the while enveloping the columns that held the balconies above me suspended in the burdened air. The shadows of those pillars, hence, resembled the svelte figure of the Flamenco dancer that had infused so much presence into the then quiet plaza. The towering terrace above took me under its wing, shielded me from the unnatural light of street lamps, and muffled the sound of senseless murmurs. I extended a night-cloaked hand and hissed a call.

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Tacit dancer

Her dark figure grew from the ground up, a shade liberated from the confines of surface. Her stance was a silent dance, motionless, yet stating intent, a stifled shout: "Flamenco!" Her face was aged, yet of timeless beauty:

Half moon eyes - the inverse smiles of samurai masks. The slender, sharp nose sliced the air she breathed, a blade hung over her fine mouth, wide and stern guarding a voice deep and sensuous, of musky tones, textured like white birch bark. Her hair, knotted into a tense bun, more than embraced her scalp, nigh permeating it even, the black ink of an epopee twisted and condensed beyond sense.

What darker threads of thought hid beneath? I imagined their ebony silk boil into sung voice as passion burnt them, leaving only the ash of memory. She did not rummage through the pale flakes of feeling, but instead tamed desire by becoming more obscure than its object, unfathomable to temptation and fate.

As dark stars absorb all light about themselves, so she had drained the light of day to herself, leaving the rest of the square in darkness to my eyes. Only later did I take notice of her escort, a man of ample chest and weathered, rocky face. His apparent prowess was tempered by his meek demeanour, such that side by side the two companions appeared disparate yet inexorably bound: like the King and Queen of a graceful chess set, like Lord and Lady Macbeth, like Mathieu and Conchita...

Silverback

A living image of the one who is Silverback, yet charcoal heart, burning...

Amo, Ergo Sum

It lay on a mnemonic shelf, gathering the dust of pained experience, whose unwholesome radiance had already started to corrode the edges of the symbols. As I held the phrase within my hands - cautiously, lest the letters lost cohesion and fell onto the ground - I pondered if these words held power still. I swept the sooty grime off their bare scalps and regarded the fleshy meaning beneath:

"Amo, Ergo Sum," my olden, aged motto. "I love, therefore I am." Unconditional love. One that once given, is ours no longer, but something that is simply part of us. The uncanny flame that e'en boundless sea cannot quench. A love that is quietly crazy, tenderly mad, whose solemn stare slips out of straight-jackets and squeezes past the doors of perception, while the body stays bound...

...until passion seizes this coil and tears the ties, splinters the gates in a blind frenzy. The blunt fire that burns all or burns out, its very own funeral pyre. The love that's never released from Pandora's box, lest it destroy us, lest we lose hold of its wild reins, lest it be ours no longer. The erotic love of the "Odi et Amo, Ergo Sum," the Taoist half-brother of the Buddhist "Amo, Ergo Sum," son of hatred as well as love. The bittersweet Eros of Anne Carson.

Broken glass

Years ere, I had a Nightmare, a most unpleasant affair. Indeed, a nightmare with capital letter, for the usual nightmare is rather interesting. The latter turns the misty matter of dream more solid, more living, and sharper than sentient existence. But Nightmare is something else, it is the sweat soaking your face in the morning, the tremor of tendons as fingers sweep sand out of dilated eyes. Nightmare is a dream too frighteningly real, one that threatens to overthrow stable reality to let reign the pandemonium of reverie. Fear comes from feeling that your existence is perhaps confined to the realm of the looking glass, and the smirking face behind the mirror gloats over your stolen freedom...

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