Part 9.4: Sentimental Paralysis
I feel as if someone is tugging at my eyes, as if a strange force wants me to look as blurry as in the ages of this budding world, and run the fingers of death across my neck: passion and death, the second is implied in the other.
Or so Luz thought at 15, when she decided she couldn't obey her father even because tomorrow was her birthday, she couldn't sleep thinking about what had happened with Alexis. No, even though he had thrown water on her, she did not know why, but for the first time she felt that cold water was a blessing.
She felt bad because, instead of thinking about what she was going to give him, there was the drawing of Alexis' face that she had been doing since the night her mother decided they would never see each other again.
It seemed very strange to him to be drawing a picture of himself. He wasn't even good at painting any of his drawings, he always got out of the lines or got tired of moving the colored pencil so fast that he never gave the drawing the depth it needed to "come to life on paper".
She began to draw with the intention of making it a portrait of her father, but the lines were moving farther and farther away from his geometric features every day.
Luz had sat down on a bucket and put the paper on the wide sill. With each stroke she made under the moonlight she wondered if Alexis could feel her caressing the outline of his face.
"Could she have woken up at midnight with no apparent explanation?"
The more he paints he reflects on perhaps the reason he never wanted to give color to any of his drawings; as he watches his brother doing the typical code you use so no one knows you are telling someone else. Of course, so as not to wake anyone up, he is writing it on the acrylic board given to his father by a former client.
At the time Margot's family was not doing so well financially, but that was a secret no one at school knew, no one except Luz. She obviously wouldn't say a word to anyone or she would get a few bruises at school. Although if that wasn't the case, she wouldn't divulge Margot's new residence either..... unless Esteban is interested in a snake like her.
Although she couldn't see her brother's address, she could imagine what he must be saying to Margot. She was laughing as she danced to techno, you couldn't hear the music, but those steps were unmistakable.
"Maybe I had never felt what I feel now, what they (Margot and Esteban) feel; I've never taken any risks, always protected and trapped.
What is life?
It's a lie, it's a vile lie, it's a lie that love gives color to life, otherwise the whole world would be black and white. If I don't feel love for my parents, less for him... but I want to love so much that I could drown in it.
Maybe risks are what give color to life; maybe insecurity, understood as motivation, makes us put color to things.
Before him, I understood insecurity as an anesthesia, and why not with him?
why with me yes?
It is the same with Esteban and Margot, she behaves like a normal person with him and vice versa. What should be normal gives them color, what motivates them gives them the color of life... but THE FOREVER don't exist."
Luz observes that the wind lifts her brown hair and Margot's totally blonde one. Suddenly he felt compassion for the wind, he could only feel the present of others, never himself.
"... why?
Why is the present of ignorance to be present in everyone?
Why do we pretend to love if we ignore how to love... and yet, even having present that ignorance can cause me more chaos... yet, I will ignore that the present of my chaos is ignorance... I don't mind being indifferent if that gives me color... it doesn't matter because the desire to love motivates me and you are the only possibility outside this house."
She decided to wait for Margot and Esteban to go to sleep. He didn't think they would spend about 4 hours in that flirtation, but it happened. At 5 a.m. Luz could just leave her room to go to her favorite place, favorite to wait for the sunrise.
At the last minute she remembered that she could not go to see Alexis, not only because she should not, but also because it was Friday the 13th and she did not want to tempt the forces of destiny. She had had a strange dream about that day, it was the only dream she remembered completely inside her head.
For her it was a ritual to go every Friday the 13th to the forest near her house, there she felt so "normal", or at least no one was judged there.
The best thing was that at no point on the route to the forest did I ever have to touch the ground again. And the way from her house to the forest was just a matter of climbing the tree next to her window, then the one adjacent to it, and then there was a whole row of trees that could open the entrance to the forest.
As soon as Luz reached the first sheltered tree, the first tree that begins what is considered the forest; she climbs up to the highest branch. When she reaches the top she always wonders the reason why even if she reaches the highest branch, it is never enough for the tree to allow her to see the sky from its perspective. No, instead, it seems that all the trees in the forest are united (their tops are adjacent to each other to cover the sky) for a single purpose: no one under their protection will see the light that they consider only theirs or, rather, that only they understand its real value.
Continuing with his ritual: Once at the top he says a single verse that sums up the most realistic dream he has ever had, that of Friday the 13th.
"Within the lake, the nature of my heartbeat breaks to hunt your vampire kiss in a dream of humanity."
Then he climbs tree after tree, branch after branch, between the highest branches to those lying flush with the ground; it was like composing a melody, high, middle and low tones, blending his nature with that of the forest. This time, unlike the others, he began to narrate the real tale of Friday the 13th in the form of an epic poem:
"A rationally irrational being
seeks to unite her irrationality with the irrationality of the world.
Crossing the sky with oars made of twigs
and a little boat of fleshy utopia wet in detail
It has the order of natural instinct
It has the venia of a multiform lullaby
It has the certainty of a harassed heart
It has the guidance of a sentimental light
It has the possibility of a curious passion
But when the multiform lullaby
Wants to be certain of its real form
the sentimental light becomes passion
the eternal passion of curiosity
attached to the natural instinct
and the branches break from so much weight... "
Indeed, Light as she grasped the highest branch of the last tree in the part of the forest she knew; she was afraid, a shiver, as if indeed the teeth of an invisible vampire in the wind were numbing her neck; then she let go, but a hand lifted her from the other side of the forest... the side of the radioactive light.
So that's why there are replicas of the flaming demon?
The demon is the radioactive light in her mind.
When she picked it up she was no longer sure it was a hand holding it; but far from concentrating on it, she could only be absorbed in that feeling in her neck. Something was breathing on it and following the curved line of it. She could not open her eyes, she had only trust left; for many things were said about this side of the forest, those radioactive beams of light were like well-sanded fangs.
Sanded by whom?
Luz felt the presence of that invisible specter (could it be a vampire?) on both curves of her neck. She "watched" the darkness of her own closed eyes and how those rays somehow created orange light marks in the blackness of her vision.
"They were true the rumors, many have survived this, but why is it here, only here, the darkness is as lonely as the forest...but darkness truly everyone hates."
Only the adults talked about this side of the forest and how to get out, but Luz is so capricious that when something makes her curious she can't stay without knowing and this is the case. So when his mother sent him to buy the newspaper at the corner store, he bought a scientific magazine and told his mother that he thought it was better: "Esteban is very creative, I have no doubt that he is going to be a great inventor and I think he should start with this".
She knew where to convince her mother, she had studied her unconsciously as much as her father, and as she in turn believed that her three sons had special abilities. Although this belief, in Luz's opinion, came more from her mother's need to be a good mother. The truth was that none of the three felt special, or at least, that feeling did not make them feel good.
"You are part of that range of lights that will color the new generation of the world in their own way."
and Luz remembered this because that was the headline of the article she was interested in reading. In short, and focusing on the part Luz was interested in, it said that only by having or imagining an original sexual scene could you come out of the bowels of darkness. According to them, because the darkness, unlike the others, seemed to be alive and aware that the only humans to whom its existence was useful, were the so-called "lovers" who love each other on the sly, excuse the redundancy.
Perhaps it was not a hand that held her, but it served the same function; for she felt that she was being lifted toward an uncertain destiny.
As the seconds passed on the ascent, Luz felt the branches grow, like Pinocchio's nose, with a clear intention.
The first branch pulls the thread coming out of her white skirt-shorts, then the second and the rest slowly unravel the thread with a spiral movement. It is as if they unravel her present, a schoolgirl with the typical and not so typical disorders of adolescence, starting with her clothes.
When there was nothing left to detach from the descending curves (hip and waist), one of the branches came from the right side and stuck to the lower half of her back; and, although the speed increased and other branches arrived to snatch her place, none could reach her handling of the rare power of excitement ; at each "mugging" the indomitable branch caught the others after exerting on these a pressure that contracted and separated them.
Luz would describe this strange power of the branches as something mystically sensual. It was as if the branches were the hands of nature touching every part of her body: her breasts succumbed first (or she felt the excitement there first), it was as if the air held back from a last breath lifted her nipples, between her legs she felt as if someone wanted to capture that last breath and give her another point of view about her mere existence... the one that prefers to endure the pressure in the dark.
The collarbone of both the fifteen year old Light and the 16 year old Light who is about to lose her bones is paralyzed by the background vibration; which sounds like drumsticks that are just about to test the potential of the drums.
IN SHORT, THE PAST AND THE PRESENT ARE BECOMING ONE.
DOES THAT BRING ME ANY DISADVANTAGE?
I THINK IT'S ALREADY CLEAR THAT THE STORY OF THE ROMANCE BETWEEN THE DEMON AND LUZ NEVER HAD A DENOUEMENT, DIDN'T IT?
OR IS THERE SOMETHING UNKNOWN TO MY LOGIC?
To tell the truth, the clavicle seems to rule over the rest of the excited elements in Luz; and it is that both the breasts and everything else in question are very still. Luz feels in her body "a blanket of peace"; but it is of a fabric as thin as her now defunct school championship cheerleading outfit. It is like the pressure that frames her soul, another way of controlling herself with no hope of real success..... BECAUSE HER SOUL IS REMADE OF EFFERVESCENCE.
And I have selected this last word in particular from a long list of human synonyms; because the cloud that has trapped my tail got wet and now, not only is it getting darker; it also turns out that the moment of emotional stillness (and maybe something else because her soul also stopped in time) of Luz has caused my cloud (it is only the first one affected) to retain a kind of transparency impossible to see in my eyes or in the eyes of any being that is male or female of any mortal or supernatural race.
This transparency is in a liquid state since the liquid takes any existing form and as we are all one existence; as this state of matter reflects our reality, the only reality, the common reality... WE ARE ALL CONNECTED.
The clouds in your mind represent what makes your soul different from others. My cloud is the first one that is yielding to this kind of effervescence process of the transparency that the clouds guard. The point is that the effervescence causes my cloud to melt into bubbles made of itself.
What will happen to me?
WHERE WILL I FALL TO WHEN THE CLOUD HAS FINISHED DESTROYING ITSELF?
And mind you, I doubt that the particularities of her soul vanishing is a good thing; if it were the opposite, I would not be able to see the cloud bubbles. She is supposed to be able to see, after this process, that we are all the same; but to anticipate this result, transparency should prevail over cloud, so she should not be able to see even a hint of any bubble.
I can not stay with "arms folded", I have no doubt that this reconstructive process of the soul of Luz (I think it is not the first) gives me too much influence not only human, now it is well linked to adolescence. I feel it in my tail, it is bristling, maybe I am distressed and try to feel strong for my uncertain future; I am not provoking it, there is an invisible and magnetic force around.
I'm not sure that force is precisely Lucifer's, there's more here than just low passion and toxic teenage love. If it was just a hell thing she would have burned long ago with that radioactive light.
Even if Luz has her eyes closed she has made a mistake typical of hot desperation: Imagining what she was going to find up there without foreseeing that it was possible that what was up there didn't want her.
DID NOT WANT HER NECK
DID NOT WANT HER LIPS
DID NOT WANT HER BODY
DID NOT WANT HER SOUL
HE LOVES HER PASSION FOR THE MENTAL STATE OF HER OWN SEX.