The girl and the gale (Hurricane Ike)

01.03.2019 0 Автор admin

The girl and the gale (Hurricane Ike)

It is the storm Ike on the screen; the beach, stripped of all signposts and swings, of all signs of civilization. Everywhere, seaweed and dead trees, the roots exposed, often sunk in the mud upside down. The sea has chewed up and spit out everything that is no longer of necessity to it and probably shall remain of no use for a long time. Two towering power poles have remained still standing, along with the cable slung between which already seems redundant. The reporter is leaning against one of the poles, almost hugging it, as the only familiar thing on an otherwise unknown planet. The rain is coming down in sheets. In disturbed and twisted sheets, because of the gale. The reporter’s hat and umbrella vanished a while ago, while he looks like a pointillist canvasrendered by an apprentice painter.

“Those who fail to be evacuated by morning, are one hundred percent condemned to death.”

One hundred percent? I ask myself. Only the Lord could have spoken thus. Meanwhile, a chick perches on the power cable. Then, a second one, a third, a fourth, one after another, at equal distances from each other with tiny heads, chests sticking out. Their eyes can’t be seen in spite of the intentionally enlarged field. It’s obvious. The director wants to balance the desolation with life. Perhaps even enchanting contingency? The Creator’s game? Perhaps the Lord’s final intention was to come up with this exact scene: The birds lined up on the same line, like sevens lining up on the casino screen, after a moment of fluctuation. I want to congratulate the Lord. But was it worth it Lord, this whole devastation, this entire wet and muddy story in the name of this brief victory? This time the picture is further enlarged and in the third chick’s eyes, the memory of the last fingers dispensing bread crumbs becomes visible. I didn’t know birds were that grateful. While the signpost warns: “Those who feed the birds are punished by force of law”, with all the other signposts already floating over waves visible in the distance, light as bottle corks, chuckling. There are no longer the punished or unpunished ones. The city is a mere area of specters and shadows, without roadways, footprints, without rice- or flour-traced pathway’s by which a stranger would return to the same point. At this moment, the beach looks like grey matter, wet primal stuff, from which tomorrow the next Genesis willcommence, should the Lord wish it so. The first day once more shall be named Monday.

            

Without turning off the television, as if that would shake the power poles or hurt the reporter who had put his life on the line, I descend, slide under the sheet, unnoticed, mixing my breathing to my loved one’s already-turned-dense ‘sleeping man’s breathing’, as though I was never absent. Yet, a little later, he turns towards me and incarcerates my body in all conceivable ways, to the point that I barely can breathe. It seems, in his recurring nightmare, I had once more escaped from him and now, he is happy that it was only a dream, that I am here with himin reality.  in reality. Tomorrow he will tell me about his dream and I’ll ask once more: “Me? With whom had I run away? Was he good looking? Tell me everything in such detail that I may recognize him, if I ever meet him!”

In the past, these dreams made me angry, but now I console myself with my second life, with the suppleness of my body, by which it makes it able to secure its needs in someone else’s dream, when I am sitting slumped at my desk or my TV set, disheartened and scared of this cold war widening between nature and man. Pointless,I went to bed. All the same, I cannot sleep musclebound, my mind still to recover from the epic speed of the gale. I wait ensconced, until its extremities become self-reliant and leaning on my one free elbow I attempt and slide a bit to the right, in the process liberating also the left. There is no responding motion, therefore all is proceeding well. Liberating the feet is harder. First, it is essential to casually move the paws and during the movement, as if unconsciously or while asleep, slide them out. If no reflex, the sleep is genuine. “Bravo! Little Houdini,” he will say if he were simply faking sleep. Sometimes, he even fakes his own breathing to disorient me, to mock my attempted escape, to interrupt my joy of having ‘almost vanquished the snare’. All-told, because the hardest is to isolate my breathing from the general rhythm. It’s at this moment, that he wakes up in earnest. Leaning on my elbows, I slide my right foot, wait a moment, then the left one. On the way, meandering towards the edge of the bed, I lower my feet, first one, then the other. The descent may be considered successful, if my foot does not touch inadvertently my cat’s, Pablo’s tail, in which case I remain seated, because my next step no longer depends on me, alone. I look for my soft slippers with my paws, one warmer than the other. For a moment I shut my eyes and try to understand those who do not escape. At first, Pablo follows me, then on the stairs ends up ahead of me and leads me all the way to the kitchen table. It jumps and sits on my papers and stares into my eyes. As if saying, “Come on, sit down, what are you waiting for?” As if we had planned my escape together. 

“Yes, Pablo, it’s a hard thing to be a man.”

While on the screen it is still the same storm and the same reporter, a bit wetter and more tired. This time not leaning against the pole, but his hand touching it lightly since the pole has leaned quite a bit. Whatever happened to the birds?

Some, however, have not left in spite of all the ‘one hundred percent’ death warnings. Many label them as ‘fools who have resigned from life’, weak and timid slaves of their possessions with no trust in nature and the power of destiny, deaf-mutes, cripples or despondentsouls. ‘May the Lord protect them’, forewarns the righteous newsman, his eyelids shut by the rain.

While the storm still races, like a new epic heroine of the universe, like a hysterical woman maniacally obsessed with cleanliness, scraping and sweeping underfoot all redundant waste in sight. Like a neurotic loveless woman breaking, flinging, smashing and scattering every which way all things on her path, like a new kind of beast with frazzled, lifeless hair, shrieking and howling in all capableof hearing male ears – “Is this what you all wanted? You wanted this? This…!” and she laughs out loud with the collective rasping throat of all the loveless women in the world, ha…! ha…! ha…! ha…! …

While in my dream I see that girl (who refused to leave),moving at the speed of 150 miles per hour, flying in the direction of the gale with long golden hair and a wide silken skirt – otherwise bare. Hair and skirt mixed together in the gale, but even in that confusion, pristine! Is the girl running, or flying? I can’t tell. I have never been in the current of a gale moving at the speed of 150 miles per hour. Yet how I wish I could be, I too would refuse to leave! To feel the gale’s solid, invisible hands, with which the girl’s trusting body is driven towards an unknown place, with fear beneath her chest and curiosity. To taste the rough, yet desirable ferocity of those hands, which bears the promise of a new kind of mystery and security, a different scale of fulfillment in its rhythmically accelerating breath. The virgin is not thinking of these things. She simply has surrendered to the gale’s current, accepting it as fate, and from that point onwards she is calm. More than that. She has already joined the gale, turning into a segment of its clothing and the one moving now is not just the gale, but she and the gale, at their combined speed – now more dangerous than ever. And the gale and the virgin run, like two lovers so secure that the girl interrupts their embrace once in a while, lets go of the gale’s hand and playfully runs ahead, against the storm. What do her breasts feel? The golden-hued bridge of her hair stretches to the other shore of the ocean. Here rests also their nuptial bed, swaying peacefully on the waves. Shall love conquer? This is the question. While the gale keeps up its debutperformance. Like an Olympian striving for new records, it moves in the opposite direction of time — rejuvenates the universe.

Day one, the Creator separates light from darkness.

Day two, water from land. Orviceversa?