We
shall not cease from exploration
And
the end of all our exploring
Will
be to arrive where we started
And
know the place for the first time.
T. S. Eliot
When
the ashen mantle covering the land starts to melt, and the frozen streams begin
to thaw, I finally come out of the sombre dominion of terra incognita where I
resided for an eternity. As soon as I
leave it behind, I realize that, dark as it may be, it had been home for me
long enough to make it at least familiar, and that this new world which I am
stepping into is what is to be dreaded. I open my eyes, and when I first see
you I am so dazzled by the radiance emanating from you, and so confused by your
amorphous presence that I can’t make out what or who you are or where I am. The
terror inside overpowers me and I start to cry. The more I cry the more I
breathe you, and the more your fluid spectre permeates my essence. Totally
disoriented I quickly withdraw in fear. Then you come closer to me, extending
your hands, and smiling. I am still frightened, but I understand that it is
hopeless to keep on resisting you, and fearing you. I become certain that I must stop crying, that I should trust
you and welcome your hand, that I have to let myself be carried away by
the infinite possibilities insinuated by
the softness of your touch, that it is necessary to follow the light attracting
me from behind the transparency of your face.
Restraining my tears and fears, trembling and hesitating, I allow you to
embrace me. I touch you, I smell you, I taste you, and I experience some sort
of security. I dare to crawl out of the comfort, unawareness, and state of
nothingness of my amniotic world, and take the first steps into the unknown. I
firmly hold on to your hand and walk alongside you, reassured. As we walk
together farther and farther, fear gives way to courage, doubts to certainty,
shadows to brightness, and bleakness to foliage. The gloomy sky, the blizzard,
the drifting snow, the freezing rain, and the ice storm are no more.
The first blades of grass turn green, and
the new leaves sprout fresh and intense. The flowers: irises, camellias,
daffodils, hyacinths, tulips, and pansies are blossoming everywhere. The birds:
robins, bluebirds, sparrows, orioles, blackbirds, hummingbirds, swallows, and
cardinals have returned, after a long absence, and are filling the air with
countless playful notes. The bees and the butterflies are inseminating the
stigmas and the micropyles, while the sunlight is catalyzing the creation of
life. When everything that is alive is mating, you come on to me like a siren,
tempting me, teasing me, luring me with your enchanting voice. I still have to
learn to trust you completely, but the germ of life begetting new life is all
around me, and the magnificent orgy that is unfolding before my eyes is
contagious. You utter your cunning and smooth words, you make your strange
promises; you take my hand and force me to caress your hair and your face, to
feel the moisture of your inviting lips, to touch your seductive breasts and to
feel the pulsating force inside them. My trembling fingers eagerly rush to
search in the unfathomable abyss of your navel; they explore the enigma of your
thighs, and the terrible magic of your sex. I can’t resist you anymore; all my
defences collapse; I totally succumb to this wonderful and fatal attraction
that will probably bring me crashing to your rocky shores. I frantically try to
learn and memorize every line, every angle, and every recess of your body. I
desire to be consumed by your breath of fire, your kiss of life, your kiss of
death. Your spores have contaminated all my insides, and the infection is
irreversible.
By the time the cattails and the reeds are
tall, the ponds are teeming with frogs, the damp haze hangs heavy, and the
sweltering nights settle in (still inebriated by the hyper-stimulation of the
senses that the rebirth of nature brings with it), I am fucking you like a wild
animal. I am discovering, exploring, touching and tasting every inch of your
body; I am completely under your spell, totally powerless and at your mercy.
Wrapped around you, I vanish, I cease to be, time stops, and I dissolve. I
yearn to be inside you; I ache to leave my fluids in you and all over you; I
long to cling to you and die a thousand deaths.
When the goldenrods have invaded every idle
field, and the first leaves turn to brown, wither, and crumble under my feet,
my self-confidence is shattered. Weather gets colder, and so do you. You become
detached and remote, elusive and ethereal, ephemeral and inapprehensible,
stingy and vindictive. I become jealous and possessive. I have charted the
entire geography of your body, and now my obsession with you takes a dangerous
turn, now I want to know your mind. But
I secretly know that is impossible, that you will reveal to me only what you
want, that I should give up trying to understand you, and above all, that I
must stop wanting you. I am assaulted by
the suspicion that for some obscure reason you are using me, and letting me use
you as a means to reach some destiny. I am afraid that you are the accomplice
of some immutable force against which I have no will; a force that is slowly
but relentlessly pushing me towards the fulfillment of my fate. I analyze,
rationalize, and dissect every one of your moves and moods, every nuance of
your words, trying to understand why you led me to the heights of total
ecstasy, only to let me fall into the chasm of complete agony. But doubting,
rationalizing, and analyzing take me nowhere, and I sink into despair. While
the days become shorter, and the sky gloomier, I grudgingly come to the bitter
and inevitable conclusion that (for reasons that I can’t explain) this bliss is
supposed to be only transient; that my leaves will fall, and my soul will wither;
that you never promised to love me forever; that I have to lose you, that you
must leave me; that it is useless to demand explanations, that it is futile to
search for answers. I now know that I
could venture into the wormhole, travel to the far side of the galaxy, back to
the primeval egg, nanoseconds after the big bang, split the atom, and break the
genetic code, find my dark matter and my antimatter, only to discover that no
power in this world or any other can change this scheme of things, this state
of being; that nothing can stop you from leaving me; that even if I try to
cling to you, forever fused in an
eternal embrace, we will reach the critical mass and start the chain reaction;
my particles will collide with your antiparticles and I will be totally
annihilated. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, positrons to electrons, protons to
antiprotons; you will vanish and I will be
vaporized, and turned into a dazzling flash of photons and gamma rays;
back to the maelstrom where I was
begotten, where I will be held in perpetuity.
Fuck!
© William Almonte Jiménez, 2010
