Seeing Sounds

As if sight saw a sound. Something watches me as I watch the street and it's evening traffic. A visible sound is then installed, a vibration that is a breath, a background of perception for the perception. It is a vibration of quietness, immutable, that has always been there. Something watches me watching and what is watched ceases being observed, belongs now to a sameness without difference or separation. There would be no perception without this vibration.

The Tomb of Cleopatra

Cleopatra gained such a reputation, that she has almost changed from an undoubtedly real character into a near mythical one, equivalent to Helen of Troy or Circe, the sorceress. The fact is that she held the decaying kingdom of Egypt and managed to seduce and manipulate the powerful Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony. The truth on who manipulated and who seduced and charmed is debatable, as anything in life that concerns human matters, but it is nevertheless believable that Cleopatra was the author of the seduction part.

Learning from the news that archaeologists think that they have found the tombs of Cleopatra and Marc Anthony set my imagination free for some minutes as I heard of the possibilities for rebuilding her face and body from her mummy, DNA samples and forensic techniques. It felt sickly and fascinating at one time, this act of violation of the privacy of death and the question: “Was she really beautiful?” as if it mattered.

For what it really matters, however, I keep feeling sure that the key for the person, the source of the beauty and seduction power of Cleopatra, lies far from the shape of the body or the features of the queen. That will always be the question to remain unanswered, keeping the dead at peace and undisturbed.

The Prodigal Son

We tend to visualise a story when we think of the parable. We see the father, the jealous older brother and the prodigal son who returns from his unfortunate journey across the outer world. We see a story based on the images, a game that is played between two players, forgetting the brother, and we have the morality of the tale, which is not its ethic.

Let’s forget the moral in order to challenge the story. Taking one step further the challenge to our naïve realism of persisting in seeing literal meaning or unequivocal explanations for everything set before our eyes, we should ask ourselves whether the parable really contains a story, if the prodigal son has ever left the house of his father. How could we read it if the parable spoke about the dreams, wishes and fantasies of its own characters?

The father, not loving equally all his sons, looks for a pretext to legitimate his preference. The eldest son suffers from nightmares whereby his father’s choices are revealed to him. The youngest son fears, on his turn, losing his freedom by having to return to the place that he never left.

If we move one step further and reduce all characters to a single one, father and sons within the same person in the image of a disjointed trinity, we will have some unspeakable entity who commands us through a whisper so low that no one else can hear: “go, and bring experience back to me”, and we go, wrapped in the warmest of orders, not even conscious of having abandoned our primeval home. What really matters, then, is to know which instance of ourselves has sent us and which part of our experience is worth to be turned into a story.

A Nice Part of the World

It’s a nice part of the world, they say,
where the green and brown hills undulate for centuries
like the back of a tamed sea-goddess,
asleep, enchanted, fearful no more,
not fulfilling promises of lust years ago made,
and pheasants cross the narrow roads, unaware;
where nature lost its rudeness
and became soft, sensible and polite
as we should, gently chatting by the fireplaces,
tinkling glasses, waiting for the blue spring
to spread, like the breeze or the wings of birds,
becoming another layer of colour that you can taste.

It’s a nice part of the world, people say,
where you can leave your door and car open
that no one will come and take,
even if you want someone to,
to tear your from the inside with fire and pain,
where the detached politeness of people
mirrors the landscape without edges
and you gaze, contemplate, lost,
the wandering, dreaming eyes free at last
from the erring thoughts and restlessness
from days gone, erased, forgotten.

It’s a nice part of the world, you hear again,
but they won’t say it by other words.
Suppressed are expressions of greatness and awe,
where emotions and strong sensations go and hide
and express themselves behind closed cosy doors
where wolves, devoid of fangs, silently threaten,
with the gentleness of smiles learnt from habit,
their prey standing unaware by the window,
offering herself to that cruelty
that survived centuries of measure
and nice thatched houses by the side of the road.
It’s a nice part of the world, you say.