Books in Action Project, Essay Example

You are less a woman and more a mythical beast. When I close my eyes and think of your I hear the Valkyrie cries of your spiritual ancestors. They are you, and you are them: beasted in a way beautiful things are misunderstood…but I see that look in your eyes, in the mornings when it’s the things you do not say that grip me. There is no predecessor in my mind for love, you are all I know of it: pervasive as the jungle. You are all things I think of as untamed.

There was a time when Italy was only the buildings I saw. The ancient art, Bernini’s architecture and statues around every corner – the marbled eyes of saints in the museums I only ever passed, never stepped into. I was afraid of the frozen air near that marble. Being so near the master’s hands and yet not being able to touch it. When I met you, I felt as though I were in a museum as a young boy. Scared to touch anything for fear of breaking it; but seeing you now, full of purpose, I know that marble isn’t cold, that passion is beneath the chisel marks of those statues. I look at you and I know Italy. Italy is a woman, haunted by the things other people have done to her, and unable to change them, she changes herself.

There is nothing in the world for us: there is no higher heaven than what we give each other. The passion of you near me drives me in my quests. I know your hands like the words in my mind; they flutter, and flit and land in a delicate purpose. I take your hands, and I see the fight that’s to come: be brave with me.

You speak as if I’m a conquest. I am not to be won. I am an experience. I am my mother’s ancestors, I am Venus, I am truth. And you, you are God without a world. At least, you were before I met you. But now, I see, I know the world was always waiting for you. You say my hands are a delicate purpose but I say your hands carry an ax so well you’ve forgotten how to use your words. I read in your letter how passionate you are about us, about your cause, about art and architecture, but fail to see what you’ve learned through your conquest, through your love. If I am a marble statue then you stand next to me, stern of look and thought, solid, stalwart, and true. That is all I want from you. It’s your drive that I find attractive; don’t falter now, don’t slip up.

If my hands are a treasure then let my voice lead you to them. I say that if we fail in our conquests then it is fate that fails us, it’s the gods. They fear what power we have and what our love is capable of. And if we win, then we know that love is more powerful than anything words can ever do. I say that if you wake up in the morning and find me staring out the window instead of at you, then it’s because I see a future for us on the horizon beyond those Italian hills. I say that we are brave, and bravery goes beyond what the gods desire us to believe in. I believe in you. I believe in us. I believe in my Valkyrie cry claiming all of what I see. My heart was a red stone before I met you: I know that marble is malleable, so I say to you that I have formed it myself unnoticed at first and that’s it love that makes it beat the way it does, fast in my chest. I want you to hear it, I think if you listen, you’ll find it calls your name.

General Vela fell. He fell like a large tree that falls not from the ax but from the wind, from the forces of nature that say that they have had enough. And as the tree fell Lavinia saw in the distance of the thick forest of thoughts the boy who could fly. And she heard the unborn baby, or the baby born dead with a look in its eyes like an offering. As if this was the only way to tell the world how to truly see.

General Vela fell. And in the infinitesimal time it took for his body to land Felipe wrote a song:

The hummingbirds of her hands

Flit past the blood moon

And I find her heart is like water

That I cannot drink enough of.

And the bullet that was meant for Lavinia lodged itself in a picture on the wall, right where Sebastian would come in a moment later, to stand, like a man stands, who doesn’t know how to deal with so much blood.

Lavinia thought the trigger was the answer to all the questions that buzzed in her head like fast water down a falls. And she wondered if the images of her life went as fast, traveled across the rocky ledge of her life and fell and fell and fell, tripping over one another until they hit the bottom and came up as one tangled mess. But then she thought that Felipe told her once that water was clean, was a baptism. A way to be reborn, to find new beginnings. And this was her beginning.

General Vela fell. And as he fell Felipe wrote another song:

I am water.

I am the falls of heaven

Making the earth blush

Like a new love.

General Vela fell. And the gods laughed. Lavinia swore she heard them. She saw Pablito’s ghost, spitting on the dead tree, pissing on it. Making a scene. It was dancing, and she watched, mesmerized by this. As though she were privy to the secret chamber of a man’s midnight thoughts. The ones he keeps to himself when the world is asleep. She wondered if her thoughts danced like this. She wondered if Felipe ever danced like this in his head when he thought no one was looking.

General Vela fell. There had never been a man or a tree that took so long in falling. Loose fabric from his shirt grazed the floorboards like a hushed prayer. Lavinia thought maybe she should be praying. She wasn’t sure if she should be praying for Pablitio, for the baby, for herself…how many were still alive, how many dead? And there was so much blood, more than she’d expected. Her finger still pressed the steel trigger: she a huntress in the wood waiting for her prey to finally fall, to claim her meat, her talisman, her head of horns. She watched him and was thankful.

General Vela had fallen. When he finally landed and Sebastian came in and walked past the bullet lodged in the wall Felipe wrote a verse. He called it the measure of himself. He called it love. He called it the absence of power and war. He called it the name of his children in another life and new it had Lavinia’s eyes and soul. He wrote this:

I am not a well

I have no echoes

That run deep in the ground.

I am not a root

Like they make me out to be,

Buried in some field

Away from the things I love.

I am he,

I am pirate messenger of my soul.

I am full sails on the ocean –

I billow, and spill my thoughts to the water

That takes my secrets down to the dark depths

And hides them there, safely.