Your Eyes

                            Giotto’s fresco at Cappella Scrovegni, Padova, Italy 

"We may say that the sole one who performs a change here in this middle is Agilulfo, I do not say his horse, I do not say his armor, but that something solitaire, worried, looking forward, who is traveling on horseback within that armor. Around him the pine cones fall from the branches, the tiny canals scrolls through the pebbles, fish swim in the canals, the caterpillars gnaw the leaves, turtles walk over their hard belly on the ground, but all that is only a movement illusion in a perpetual turn back-and-forth such as that of water waves. And is in those ondulation turns that again and again Gurdulù, a prisoner of the carpet of things, is he, himself, also scattered in the same pasta with pine cones, fish, caterpillars, pebbles, leaves, mere outgrowth on the crust of the world".The Non-Existant Knight, (Il Cavaliere Inesistente) di Italo Calvino, in a free translation.

[Agilulfo is the nonexistent knight's name, the main protagonist whose condition gives title to this novel, and about whom it might be said he actually is, i.e., has an essence. Notwithstanding the fact that he does not possess any material body, at all. In contrast to his squire Gurdulù who exists concretely as a human body, but about whom it must be actually stated no kind of essence can be attributed]

When your eyes fled away from my reachable present time, then going to your other way of being, from then on quite distant from me; I glanced around myself, deciding right away to reconnect all those scattered remains of Universe, inspired by those German verses I had composed for you:

Wenn du nur ein Traum bist, 

wie arm die Realität! 

[If you are but a dream
how poor is reality!]

It dawned immediately that gaze of yours toward me, as our paths crossed in our college inner garden on that spring afternoon, having become eternal within my innermost being, was powerful enough to make me an insurgent transformer of reality itself.

The world had suddenly ‘rebelled against my wishes’, as it was said by ‘Zé Bebelo’, a character in the novel “Grande Sertão Veredas” by João Guimarães Rosa, when got aware that his gang was then exterminated on the battlefield and he, the only survivor, had become imprisoned by the enemies. Yes, I have begun to redo all that to which humans call ‘reality’, such a very naive and boring word! I started off rebuilding each small portion of the world we live in, right away putting an end to the perpetual flow towards a single, monotonous direction. How silly are these beings who self-impose such a heavy shackle, based on nothing but a stupid low belief according to which their lives inexorably go towards death and against birth! How heavy the fetters of such a self-scourging! That way, I became able to go through every moment of our past, in which your glance met my eyes. From then on, we were able to live all those emotions again, being enough for that, nothing more than a wish. But as you, Beatrice, have been fast able to intuit, I was avoiding to reach too soon that one, the very special, exquisite 23rd September glance, because of being certain my libertarian upheaval would then arrive at a paralyzing climax right there. How would it be possible for my deep self to recover control over me, under such a strongest spell? I had to to keep myself far from that moment like someone who is taking care of a most precious jewel. For that, I had to wander around you, around your eyes glancing at mine, like someone who is contemplating divine unreachable beings. Despite this, I was to remain very aware that such a jewel kept staying there always within reach of my insurgent hands. 

Playing like a naughty boy, I scoured the space-time continuum for each of those rare days in which you and I had been side by side. I touched your wonderful golden hair, getting enraptured again at each instant of the past on which I had seen you, and every tiny scene details could then be slowly repeated. Because of inverting the flow of events, I could multiply our silent tender glances. A weird and sinuous bad luck had many times kept us apart. Invading your dreams as so often your glances did with mine, I decided not to present myself as a character staging a defined role. Instead, very pretentiously I tried to imitate my preferred movie makers, directing the plots. You dreamed to be face to face with your own self right in the center of our college’s inner garden. Just there, on a flowering sunset, your gaze had so deeply pierced my innermost being, thence becoming the omnipotent driver of everything else in my life.
Dreaming, Beatrice, you met my dreamed Beatrice.
You could no be sure which phase of your life these images were coming from, in front of yourself, both Beatrice immediately agreed with me when I praised your blue eyes’ magic powers. But by no means this dream’s screenwriter would let even a tiny drop of compassion to be shown on that scene, falling to me exclusively the role of eternally in love, being repudiated any kind of passion with prefixes! Since, paradoxically, you started to be mine on the day when, within a certain, very poor, kind of reality — which soon was by myself eradicated from any possible world — you abandoned me.

At the first meeting, face to face with yourself, it would not be possible for you to avoid such an intense narcissistic ecstasy, not by any intrusion of my powers, nor do I think any kind of force, worldly or from beyond this Universe, could be able to interfere with it. Your own beauty consumed every desire of yourself, just like fire does with very dry branches.
Naked and surrounded by golden flowers, you got enchanted to see the gorgeous color of your maidenhair, then kissing your excited nipples, the face, and the red wet lips. You scented your hair and felt its delicious fragrance.
That unavoidable, and full of horny, prolonged idyll with yourself had to culminate in loud screams and groans in unison. Yes, notwithstanding you being two, your orgasm yells could be heard as a unison.

During those cries of pleasure and ecstasy, ceaselessly you were looking deep into your own sparkling blue eyes. 

The following night, both of you were sitting face to face: the Beatrice who remained within the banal, mediocre human world, in front of mine, the girl who could have existed in the inexorable flow of time, but who has searched refuge from it, having chosen to walk along a catwalk upon this world towards a , better existence within my dreamy world, in which we live on rebuilding everything. 

Starting to talk to my girl, soon you knew she hadn’t married the guy who plays the role of your husband in the concrete life.

“No, I refused him after reading some letters of a guy who was desperately in love with me."

Because of still remembering those letters, you then very surprised asked her what had been the sequence of those pre-marriage events.

“Have you stayed with Enrico, the guy who wrote those German verses, with a so impulsive passional love, able to make you suspect he could perhaps break out into the synagogue during the wedding?”

You have had, however, no answer. We know how to keep our secrets, besides why so many truths in a single dream?
You woke up a bit confused, now aware my Beatrice would no longer be so same as you these were your thoughts:

 — How was my alter-ego able to break out engagement so steeply, only a couple of days before the wedding, led by the verses and visionary fantasies of a guy who looked more like an impulsive wolf? Verses, well verses!’

You drove then to your parents’ home, trying to find those letters amidst old papers. Half-way, a small of those poems of mine was heard by you, as a strong hallucination:

Mein kleines, hübsches Mädchen,

meine kleine, hübsche Frau;

wen ich haben möchte,

wen ich haben werde! 

[My little pretty girl

my pretty little wife;

who I want to have

who I will have!]

Those letters were in a bedroom drawer which belonged to you since childhood. Keeping on kidding, I made you read then some sentences never actually written. In one of them, I would have warned you:

“If you leave me forever, mankind will forget the meaning of ‘forever’, and even time will cease to be perceived.”

In the next dream, my Beatrice made you see the enigmatic powers possessed by me. Such extraordinary abilities were evidenced when time’s flow was reversed according to our wishes, enabling us to revive together our best moments from those college years, whether had they taken place along campus’s hallways and gardens, or walking through São Paulo streets before dawn. She was showing to you this way how I made my Beatrice truly understand how explosively intense my passion is.

At this point, you asked her suddenly to bring myself too back there into such dreaming. You, too, wanted to live the past again. Right away, of course, I entered in this same dream, inviting you to rebuild the most intense scene from my memories: while reading a newspaper, or pretending to do so, I see you come walking in my direction. It is springtime’s first afternoon. You walk slowly through the garden flowers. When you pass just in front of me, I put aside the newspaper.

We look at each other, my glance meet yours, and your eyes meet mine.
I am struck by your lacerating gaze, exactly the one; the same glance, the same sparkle. Staging it all again, your eyes’ magic spell penetrates me as if concretely. I do feel its coming into my optic nerve, lodging within my innermost self, within a place certainly beyond my own awareness.
You might have already foreseen what would come next, Beatrice: your eyes’ enchantment revolutionized my whole perception of the world. There is, since that 23rd September, between all images arriving at my retina and their perception by inner self, the mighty shining of your eyes.
I became capable of making you mine and so never more letting you leave out towards the parking lot, when I, bewitched and unable even to know which eyes were mine or yours, followed your image till its fading among those countless cars.

I keep on visiting your dreams. However, as I expected, we are now unable to stage any other scenes than these:
Holding each other hands, we make up a new Giotto’s painting. Yes, I have found in the paintings of this renaissance Tuscan artist so many eyes identical to yours! We repeat our mise-en-scène: your slow walk, our face to face, your eyes taking hold of me.

We are going to dream this for all nights in our lives, Beatrice, until the moment when, after all concrete hindering be gone, we will be able to meet together again.

Face to face.
Eyes in eyes.
Together as we have always been.
Just one I-Thou essence through all eternity.

                      ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ

This tale-poem may be read on the novel 'The Last Owl', a sample of which is available just through a CLICK HERE.