From "Sic Transit" (2)

"It is only by admitting the night physically that one is able to admit it morally. O, nights of young!" — Lautreamont

The dark glory of a time of hardship: about a month ago, D's seemingly accidental tortures finally took their toll: first, she pulled my lucky fish eyeball out of her bra during softball; second, she humiliated me at the flannel shirt sale; and finally she fucked my uncle the cardinal behind the funnel cake concession at the Back-of-the-Yards carnival. I always knew that despite her successfully projected aura of innocence she was pure evil. But to those who didn't know her was "the Mexican Shirley Temple." To me she embodied the destructive power of Persephone. Of course that meant she could renew, too, but that aspect was always far too removed for me to see my way through.

D was the creator of a successful literary career based on four novels about living in hovels. Before that she'd been an acrobat. She claimed she adapted the words and moods of her circus girlhood for her first book, "A Bowl of Blue Roses," and thus discovered that a healthy dose of artifice passed off as verity magically released people's charity. On the other hand, she herself communicated by a kind of cruel levity: when one complained about, say,a migraine, she'd offer her own version of the will-to-power: "To suffer is to allow. A mountain labors to birth a mouse." Or, if one were feeling a bit run-down: "An insufficient lunch can cause instability in anybody. Even a nun." After her fourth novel, "The Hideous Familiar," about the love between a Balinese buffalo herder and an adjunct professor, was remaindered, she decided to retire, but returned to the circus for a farewell performance, reprising the feat which had made her famous.

After assuming the spotlight in the center ring she "levitated." However, her harness and its shiny plastic strings were obvious; she hadn't even bothered with the proper concealing garments. But it didn't matter; to thunderous applause she rose to the rafters. She tried and failed at grabbing her ankles, and slipped slightly out of the harness. A gasp rose from the audience. But that didn't matter, either, because they all loved her, and then more than ever, because of her failure. Clowns lowered her to the ground, and she took her final bow. Backstage she addressed the adoring crowd: "I now understand the dramas of forgotten gods. Their tragedy was just loss of audience. The half-smile of the Venus de Milo has nothing on the wistfulness of the Botticelli Venus. But we can still honor them by ignoring the Anglo-Saxon portion of life's overlong program."

She made a sweeping gesture that implicated me, and was borne off on shoulders in a frenzy of glee. I had to acknowlege, in spite of my torment, that she was never more beautiful than at that moment.


to be continued ...