I: A PAINTING OF VISCERAL DEFENDER LEXICA ALEJANDRA – DIANA MODE

All I saw was white for miles: the bare pocket of a void, the naked breast or a backside of a sheet of paper. I stumbled onto a ground of nothing: and by this I mean solely a ground of no words, of no definition, the perfect attendance of absence, and other such parts which cancel in paradox. I got up. I looked to my right. In a distance, a relatively short one for a realm nigh divorced of human measurement, a bench sat with someone on it. Before them, before me, even further there was a perfect blue lake that only spanned so far.  

 

I walked. 

I was coming up upon the back of the bench along with shoulders dressed in a navy sweater, the tan vest decorating an upper body beyond those clavicles I watched just be, the close collar white and textured, bleached and cotton, the edges sharp as a deer hoof. Her right shoulder along the ridge abducted me. It led to a hand extended, rested, and placid. Something slightly offsetting was that aside from the normal outline of a human’s form she had a second replicate of oneness about an inch from the original – an aura of Maya blue just apart from the central her. I found myself standing closest to the back of my captor.

            “Mmm, ¿qué estás esperando? Ven y siéntate.

(Mmm, what are you waiting for? Come and sit down.)”

            I remember adults telling their kids “siéntate” when I was a kid. So I got these words relatively easy. I walked around. I sat at the end of her fingertips. She turned her head to me slightly. Her eyes were blue, a bit of the fawn shade that collectively composed her expressionist face leaked into her left sclera. Blue hues illuminated her wispy strokes of black hair from the bottom. From the bottom lid, to along the left cheek bone and down and around the side of her jaw the same Maya blue filled that space and other touches to her face, as if to connote incompletion of a painting. The color’s warmth washed around me, a base coat of invisibility, prior theoretical and transient “impossibility” permeating into actuality. But this was her, I felt, completely. I felt whole so far beside her.

            Those hue areas of hers filled and lined the lake as well. Looking at the farthest end, I noticed that the lake was…patchy, frayed at the edges. Small perfect lines of a section of water bisecting others over and over towards the back shore, glimpses of light torn by blank space. Incomplete. I saw a pair of black bird feet which lead to a body of nothing and a head piece of black with a beak of orange. It came closer, as if a mute swan. Upon further inspection, it was a mute swan. It pecked along the shore. My companion bit into a corner of her lip, as if she was nervous, but actually bit through it, took it into her mouth and spit it out for the bird as if it was a morsel of bread. She returned her eyes to me and smiled with a closed mouth, except for the breach of those absent crumbs.

            I began to tear up then and there. Then she said something. Something not using the familiar form…did I something….I couldn’t understand her. I shrugged. She chuckled. My heart rose to the ceiling of my ribs.  I froze. Allow me a moment to translate, to depart from reality.

            I had been waiting for this moment since before I could possibly fathom its arrival. I began to pant. I fought to regulate myself. It wasn’t simply the fact that I was here beside Alejandra Pizarnik in time, it was, but it was mostly my realization that I couldn’t converse with her by way of words that set my being into such a tremor. If it isn’t obvious by now, I am no Spanish master; actually, I am quite a novice. I did like two units of Rosetta Stone. I tried in every class I took for it, including my first and most current one in college. I passed with a B. I always made an effort to talk in class. The teacher was friendly, which helped – but I would like to think I broke my normal silence because I genuinely desired to learn the language. Granted I slipped up an assignment or two and made a constant B on all the tests, but I did well enough. My passion exists a bit beyond the classroom setting. If it isn’t obvious by now, I am currently very into Latin American authors. I won’t list them all, but two central to now in particular are Cesar Aira and Alejandra Pizarnik.

I was a bit overjoyed when I found Pizarnik’s Poesia Completa – I had wanted to get into her. I opened the book and discovered that all the poems were in Spanish exclusively. At first I faltered a bit – then I thought: why don’t I just translate a few of them as a bit of extended practice? So I did. I scoured a few online dictionaries, used Google Translate to help with sentence structure, though sometimes it didn’t help so instead I accessed new areas of my text books far exceeding my current curriculum, studied them, shaped her future tenses into current English forms, transcending the bounds of language to create communication, evince and try to illuminate what she meant. I stuck to specifics when crafting my own definitions. I chose certain works carefully; I wove her words with those of my own and made an imperfect, but important simulacra.

            Looking back, I know there are more excellent that could transcribe, decode, evoke, evince, and exhume the emissions of Sra. Pizarnik’s being, and that I could never in good confidence submit my translations to some literary journal to be taken seriously, but those people don’t matter – it was always about trying to mend the space between she and I, to stitch an interstitial bridge between us both – even if the end met and meant her eternal back to me. Because that’s the bound between death and living, correct? A side one could never cross, unless one took the preparation which would mean traveling there over by way of their own expiration. I am not about that life.

 I felt lucky that I could be here now, even if it wasn’t forever – because my words imbued with desire would always deliver me here again if I wanted to sit beside her. I just had to learn more, and better. So the terror I feel now is an exaltation of delight, but it’s also an enfermal burning sadness. At my current state of Andrew, I was not capable to attempt the warm and moist word trade, tongues and mouths together taking turn by turn to wave the conversation into a thread of life worth remembering and tweezing to create the sweaters that suffering, wanting to have hands travel under to take from a chest only to attain the most soaring crystallization of being.

 I wished I could stick around her long enough for her form to spell mine into something familiar – a hug she would give at the ankles and feet of her letters. Desire is not just a state defined by lack of knowledge, or a default delineated ignorance of the desired and their traits we come to hold to our faces, but it is the will to learn and love intelligently and bind such a fissure together. I will cultivate my love into a lexicon I can present and build through her, to her.