Photographs courtesy of Hedi Slimane
Chapter 6 : Centaur on a wheelchair
He is grizzled, and rusty, for sure, but nevertheless remains dignified, his elegant profile refusing to lower in acceptance of his loss, losing being the only empire that deigns to be ruled by him now, as he slides inexorably towards his last horizons, once pure gleaming bronze, now patches of rust sliding across his still defined and perennially tanned body, as if the passing clouds are projecting their shadows on the screen of his existence, a statue lost in time, a god of sea stranded on faithless land, a conch that no longer sings of the waves but only echoes its own serpentine, porcelain silence, sitting as if ossified, on the throne of his majestic tractor, regally transported but simultaneously incapacitated by this vehicle, riding solemnly on the immense quartet of black rubber wheels, rotating but trapped air being his only foundation, his acquired invalidity tauntingly granted epic dimensions by the mechanical mass imperceptibly trembling underneath, the contrived metal piping emanating a peculiarly lulling metal racket, an incessant firing of muffled automatic machine guns, a miniature war, mockingly donating only fragments of it’s possible spoils to the poor, deluded king that rides it, the tires, pumped, echoing ironically the tautness of his ancient muscles, his beard counting, hair by white hair, the winters sweeping across his face, as the shadow of the oak tree traces cycles on his land, once virtuous, now he is not so sure anymore.
His eyes, set deep under the lacy shadow of fraying brows, sharp as they ever were and still as clear as glass, lacking color but agile enough to capture light as fleeting as a blink, his gaze translucent but far reaching, his vision guarded, launched from an infinitesimal point of immensely concentrated energy, a minuscule black hole disappearing in the center of his illegible stare, devouring the universe through a pin hole, the soft orbs quivering around the darkness in their center, transparent crystal, as absorbent to light as sponge is to water, momentarily changing color as the seasons are transmitted and instantly refracted, tracing an eternal loop through the spherical lens, the whole spectrum freed immediately, but only after tentative and thoughtful scanning by the invisible fingertips of his mind, his inner blindness a deeply cherished secret, a power cultivated and strengthened only when the seer chooses never to hold on to what is seen, when the eyes swear not to take prisoner of the merest ray, from red to violet, and back again, but choose to send the images back, faithfully reflecting them to their original provenance, its essence captured but the icon released, a conundrum both existentially humbling and liberating, like the moment a mirror usurps your self esteem by sending you back your own image, declaring that it is able to defalcate your essence, by portraying you exactly in this or the other way, a prisoner of your own avatar unless you turn your back to it, and some never do, his vision never seizing anything, a focal point of clear consciousness, the reflections moving past it never permanently fixed, an innocent mirror at once projectile and reflexive, a ping pong of looks and counter glances, from his eyes to what is, dutifully superimposing the momentarily captured landscapes exactly over the ones that were there all along, never returning afterwards, because he never claimed anything to later call his own, never misplacing a memory because he never manufactured or facsimiled a piece of reality for his own benefit, so therefore, the faces he knew and the landscapes he saw, he never held on to any of them, they never meant nothing, until he succeeded in forgetting his own face and the landscape around him, managed to take for granted the golden field and the ancient oak tree erupting in its center, not even needing to see to know where to swerve when coursing its paths, gliding past the geyser of foliage frozen in mid eruption, an immobilized outburst that successfully put on the airs of a monument, its silhouette becoming a memorial grand enough to fit a snapshot, possessively captured by many a visiting photographer, the thick, strong trunk always circled by its faithful shadow, its movement dutifully counting the time passing through the branches and over the field, this rotating, perforated patch of darkness pierced by flecks of light, drizzling through the leaves, replicating a piece of starry night, a fragment of the sky hiding, mid afternoon, right there, under the impromptu sundial created by the tree and the field.
And then, right out of the glittering shadow swirling around the roots of the time defining oak tree, our boy jumps out, his golden youth emerging gleaming and unsullied, refreshed by sleep or even arising as if never existing before, caught in his gaze that knew no memory, in the crystal clear eyes of the man on the tractor, his grandfather, having witnessed this manifestation many times before, but never paying any attention, either to our boy, our savior, or to the landscape, a master of forgetting.
He, our boy, not older than 17, gets on his red bicycle, rushes out on the road and zooms away, effortlessly achieving escape velocity from his grandfathers’ crystalline vision, pedaling silently over the hill, a boy now, not his grandson anymore, towards the beach, in the afternoon crowded with youngsters, most of them visitors, some of them locals, like our savior.
In perfect compliance with a silent but austere routine, our boy will drop a towel on the sand, and instead of lying on the emanated heat, stored during the day, nature a kind hostess thoughtfully foreseeing the comfort of her night visitors, soon to be arriving, in pairs mostly, the durability of sand an impossibly concentrated power contained in imperceptible smithereens, a secret that teaches us of scale and time.
He walks towards the water, without making a show of it, alone, not having spoken to any one yet, he wants to dive, speechlessly and immediately, right now, our boy, at this very instant, now that the sun is about to be pierced by the horizon, it’s huge bubble bursting into innumerable flecks of trembling but intense light, the flaming horizon spurting a path of blinding brightness, endless variations of gold strewn across the surface of the sea, the water a flattering, warm shade of gray, barely crinkled silk, subdued to accommodate the mesmerizing sunset, he will not wait a second longer because, our boy, our savior, has a secret that can only be taken advantage of for a limited period of time every day, an underwater ritual, as he slides under the surface of the water, and swirls his lithe body around the enveloping crystalline coolness, his form a cluster of delicate tendrils twisting imperceptibly, maybe tickled by the tentative and thoughtful fingertips of the strong blue current avoiding, if not propelling him, the water sliding inexorably towards nothing and back again, the deep a land without horizons and therefore no destinations, the sea bed disappearing towards soft eternity, the blur of earth and the infinity of the sea neither cracked nor flexible, endlessness visible as a blue curtain, the night is hiding underwater, every day, all day, silently, patiently, as the sea frolics shamelessly above, in the land of the light, until the flaming orb in the center of the sky, exhausted, rests, and breaks apart, a disco ball reduced to its reflections, these clearly demarcating a path towards the end of the sea and the beginning of the sky, a raging line above the surface of the sea, but seen from underwater, this same line, expands into an ever shifting crystalline softness echoing the song of unknown destinations, the surface of the sea seen in reverse is the sky refracted, the water a perpetually undulating screen, touching and reverberating off the outline of myriads of unseen beaches, our boy, giggling through the softness of his air bubbles, swims once in a perfect circle around his heart, that is, turns himself upside down, that is does an underwater cartwheel, a graceful show of gymnastics that only a few fish are lucky enough to be the audience of, turns his point of view around 180 degrees until his soles are eventually touching the surface of the sea, then softly tip tops on the permeable underside of the immense oxygen bubble we call the atmosphere, and finally, he starts to walk on the surface of the sea but underwater, at least on what is called the surface by those watching the sea from outside it, but is the limit of the world for the denizens of the water, from the starfish to the forgotten gods and shipwrecks, their sky a vast expanse of fractal reflections, the deep a dissolving nothingness, our boy moving towards it, slowly following the golden path whose end splits the immense darkness down the middle, walking in a landscape that knows no horizon, the only witnesses of his solitary procession, that is the martyrs of this miraculous but inverted treading of water being the seagulls swooping to find their prey, splashing around his feet, momentarily fixing their beady gaze on our boy, our savior, his arms outstretched, some rays piercing the surface of the water, sunshine sprouting around his soles, lighting him in a way, that if seen from afar, his shape could be mistaken for a burning cross, imperceptibly flickering against the darkness, his steps tentative but concentrated, as if attaining equilibrium on a burning tightrope stretched over a great height, he moves, stepping on the underwater side of the flecks of light spurting from the dying sun, setting on the other side of the surface he walks on, the side we know, because we rarely, if ever, think, for once, for a change, to dive our heads and watch what is happening underwater while the sun is setting over our world, but if we did, at least on this particular afternoon, we would exclaim “there goes our boy!”, ambling aimlessly along the glittering underbelly of the solar footpath, towards the abyss, his eyes smiling at the dark lurking underneath the sea, the bright way he follows leading not into an explosion of colors and light, but towards the forbidding view of the far deep, not at all spectacular, but, from his point of view the only destination, his head held high towards what any other swimmer would call the open sea, but for our upside down, sky-walking boy this blackness is a temporary firmament, slowly darkening exactly like the sky above, our boy hidden by the light gilding the surface of the water, a shimmering shield blinding the beach crowd watching the sunset, his fearless procession towards the land of non existent horizons remaining a secret between him and the creatures of the sea, either those flying momentarily to pick on its abundant riches or those under its thoughtful, provident, eternal folds.
Note: A Fragile Accomplishment is a novel written and presented on Un nouVeau iDeal by Panagiotis Hadjistefanou
All photographs, kind courtesy of Hedi Slimane
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