Lightingale

Eponine Cuervo Moll

Description

« Lightmare »: Two versions of a moment in life.
« The Seduction of Change, The Enchantment of strangeness », a rather poetic autobiographical prose written in spurs during one of my life’s transitions, describes inner and outer landscapes around the world.
« Lightmare » is a poetic metaphor picturing the ups and downs of a young woman in her growing transformation from princess to queen to woman. Based on its first paragraph, « Lightmare » was conceived as a musical fugue.

Sujets

• Autre

Informations

• Publié par: Edilivre
• Date de parution: 19 novembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782414298655
• Langue: Français

Extrait

Couverture
Copyright













Cet ouvrage a été composé par Edilivre
175, boulevard Anatole France – 93200 Saint-Denis
Tél. : [phone] – Fax : [phone]
Mail : [e-mail]
www.edilivre.com

Tous droits de reproduction, d’adaptation et de traduction,
intégrale ou partielle réservés pour tous pays.

ISBN numérique : 978-2-414-29866-2

© Edilivre, 2018
The Seduction of Change The Enchantment of Strangeness
 
 
To the Earth
not all wanderers are aimless
 
 
 
Memory is the soul of being. Memory dies.
The body disintegrates and transforms itself.
Ashes incorporate themselves to matter.
Only memory dies.
 
 
I held the earth in my hands. It turned around. It spoke:
“Beauty is everywhere. Happiness is possible with the minimum, water, food and a nest that meets the conditions,” it said.
“Most of humanity does not have enough food, or a nest that meets the conditions,” I said. “The difference between tool and weapon is the finest of blades. God is dead. Love still lives. Waiting for consciousness it may die of boredom,” I said.
“Life craves intensity driven by a casual force that may have no beginning and no end, no compassion, no goal and definitely no purpose. The slumbering possibility of consciousness, out of which love may rise to heal the blind, hangs on the intricate roots of a tree around which a stone temple was made,” it said.
“All temples are still built by slaves,” I said.
I held the earth in my hands. I let it fall. I picked it up.
“Snow falls,” I said. “I am frail. Birds are slow during winter, easy prey. There are traces of blood. While falling I say yes. But all tears me apart, yes, the corpse of a bird for example, on the floor, yes, feathers and blood on the sheets, yes, life is not meant to be easy, yes, it is meant to be lived.
Beauty is everywhere,” I said.
 
 
 
When I was a little girl I believed it was possible to dig and dig and so end up in China. All Chinese had wide straw hats, umbrellas and long braids.
Now I enter the buzzing city, a spider web of light misty and dreamy under pouring rain. I hold my head just above the colorful canopy of umbrellas that rises and falls avoiding eyes. A tropical storm floods the streets. Cars go by spraying showers. The lights extend themselves magnified and blurred by the rain.
Hong Kong, luminous city with its dark dreary alleys like black ribbons. Smells in those alleys linger, stubborn, out-waiting the shadows of the ragged walls out of which ancient air conditioning units protrude. Beggars blend in with the shadows. The sadness of their faces stays with me, a ghostly chain of masks tailing behind while I surrender to the call of the lights, get lost amidst the noisy crowd hypnotized by the glare of a million show windows, offering every possible surrogate for happiness.
The day opens up a tired smile after a storm sensually stirring its last rays of light. A cascade of tears follows evolving into compulsive crying slowly drifting to eternity or sleep. How feminine, I catch myself thinking… the moods of earth.
Seduced by change, haunted by the unexpected, the sun appears consistent, stable, predictable. The feminine, responsible for impermanence dances around. Given that in humans both elements are present in different measures or percentages, change lurks seductive and dangerous. It catches me suddenly at the turn of a corner.
While having trouble with the concept of replacement I understand that everything and everybody is replaceable.
Don’t we go around life taking other people’s places much like in Alice’s garden party?
It is civil to leave ones place clean when possible.
The waters of the bay climb the stone stairs nervously, jade green, foaming. They hold the weight of the Star Ferry like a pack of wild dragons surrounded by a barrier of constantly blinking skyscrapers.
Waves of sadness take me by surprise ruefully twirling me around. After the rain, the city steams. I cross the border into China walking, following a little Chinese girl who runs ahead dragging my wheeled back pack across the wooden bridge and into the crowded station as if it where a toy.
The music now reigning over the roaring singsong of a thousand Chinese pushing the lines becomes accepted background.
I will get over my recently spilled love, wiping the blood clean with baby wipes and using peroxide if necessary. Keeping my core intact and leaving my place clean…
Once inside the train the atmosphere is gentle, soft smiling people, curious, eager to help, childlike it seems and simple inside a net of complicated reasoning inexplicable to us, stemming maybe from ancient superstitions and ending up in a wall of seemingly insurmountable bureaucracy attached to rules mostly meant to be ignored.
Replacement. Rearrangement of places. Moving on. It is senseless to try to keep a place open; are we not playing musical chairs?
No hard feelings. Pushing is against the rules. Are we not supposed to laugh and keep turning? The space is big. Each song that keeps a chair is an eternity. Love does not like to be fractioned.
The influence of the west lends the most comic of masks to the scene lulled by a sort of sentimental pop fortunately sang in Chinese with a high pitched Asian touch.
China. Blooming. Constructing. Opening itself to tourism, lifting itself up after oppression, surviving the Cultural Revolution, giggling naively into its new costume transmitted by western advertisement.
So is love possible? He fell in love with her because the music stopped and we moved on. How bitter sweet the kiss. How sticky the blood, how healing the change. Is love a twirling sun, a wild fireball? Love is an ocean.
 
The train stops. Finally morning. I see flooded fields of rice in which an old man ever so carefully negotiates his way along the narrow paths framing the water. His reflected image in wide straw hat glides amidst the clouds embracing the majestic mountains that have haunted me for years out of old Chinese paintings. As if suddenly sprouted, pushed by a whimsical force, they raise out of the plain forming an irregular chain of friendly giants. I see green bush, sculptured limestone. A child’s pencil creation defying gravity… soft lines appear to curve sensually, rocks become waves and split up in eroded bizarre points.
A purring lullaby caresses the colorful noisy little town. Water buffalos graze peacefully. A misty gray light descends to render the brush strokes, the liquid transparency.
I see mountains where tigers have ceased to roam, where inaccessible temples sit, as if placed there by magic.
Mending hearts hang innocently on laundry ropes airing in their swing the entrails of the world. I realize I must have missed the chair this time. Waiting for the next song… the enchantment of strangeness, the anguish of nonexistent time…
It is spring. The rice fields shine virgin green and juicy. Young stems stand straight and evenly framed by perfect waterways. The mountains are sprinkled with lilac. The water is pregnant.
I feel small and alone as I climb into the red balloon. I am small and alone and foolish as I climb into the red balloon with those two little boys. The roaring fire over our heads drowns all other sounds. The red balloon leaves the earth behind. A frail basket loosely held by four ropes to a gigantic globe. Even puffs of white float by. The world below shrinks gradually. Below us the chain of mountains extends itself beyond sight. The preciousness of the agricultural landscape stuns me. An immense tapestry unfolds before me woven in all nuances of greens, yellows and browns; it creates a myriad of whimsical forms playful beyond necessity. Unconscious heritage, that emotion of beauty latent in the hands of the farmer.
 
Days later the bus I rode snaked along a solitary little road. My feet felt the chilly moisture of the surrounding fog through my new walking shoes and two pairs of socks. The landscape remained hidden insinuating deep gorges. I was following a whim inspired by some pictures, looking for the site of the legendary Shangri-La… Tibetan monasteries, blooming valleys surrounded by snow peaks… but my Shangri-La was buried in snow. It drew an imaginary line of temples in the fog. The emptiness of the white valley reached infinity. Walking was painful. Recalling the bright images of the book I realized the importance of seasons. Alone I walked the trails that thousands track in summer. The wind came from all sides. It seemed to live inside the one temple I reached. I did not stay long.
Dirt followed me south. Among laughter and neon lights the pallor of the snow peaks faded. Poverty dressed the labyrinth streets. Out of tall, funky cement buildings protruding balconies like strange birdcages hid the sky.
I walked the dusty streets of crowded cities taking the smallest way at every turn. I saw tin roofs and carton walls, colorful altars to Mao everywhere. Sometimes I was afraid. A pack of dogs jumped at me! I sat down on the sidewalk…
The dogs were all crippled in some way. One was missing an eye, another had a dangling leg… they looked at me with glassy eyes in which I could detect a growing doubt…
Abused animals ambush all corners eager to trust the song with heart that comes their way. My song aches with impotence while the immutable firmament offers its party dome as if it were champagne and bubbling beauty runs across the fields while I walk between two ponds separated from a wide river by a narrow stone dam. An approaching storm shakes the palms, the water mirror trembles. I reach a little hut just before the sky breaks. Thick, heavy drops begin a base prelude to the magnificent treble of a million fingers hitting in unison a million drums but the sun lingers, throwing silver on the roofs. The streets flood suddenly. Caught by surprise colorful umbrellas brave the wind. Yet, in a fraction of a minute, the small village resumes its ordinary rhythm under a glari