— After Remedios Varo’s Creation of the Birds
All artists are night owls, she thinks, as circles grow wider
around her eyes. Eyelids lowered, her brush, an extension of
her violin-shaped heart, adds the last touches of blush to the
feathers’ tips. She tries to remember the right words thrown
pell-mell in the folds of memory ... memory adds layers to
meaning ... wants to retrieve numbers and signs from slumber,
relive the initial moment, imagines how wingless molecules
rub against each other in the copper alembic.
All it takes is a double binding broken lose to find the right
combination: only verbs are allowed. Aren’t they the heart of a
sentence? What of a wordless message as those from the heart
strung from the right chord? She holds iridium glasses to gather
light from stardust ... hoopoes, hummingbirds, kingfishers,
finches, sparrows, swallows, warblers, orioles ... she has lost
track of how many species flew in search of an answer, each
bird carrying its own song, from all corners of the earth.
Her wings aren’t strong enough to cross the seven valleys. She
needs to send an emissary to partake in the colloquy of birds.
Barefoot, she steps over shades of silver dust strewn by shooting
stars, conjures up their broken light night after night. The original
formula ... lost since time immemorial ... led to confusing myths
such as people drowning in their own reflection or making love
to their own creation. She knows the secret of the bird’s song, its
loops and roundness, but chooses silence, lets its wings flutter
through the open window. She will try again.
—-
First published by World Literature Today
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