They start with yoga. With fucking yoga at dawn in the park. Jim does this regularly, fills his body with his breath, opens his core, stretches from asana to asana and gives no directions and offers no names and strangers who-are-not-strangers come and join him, because this happens too: and they share the movements and the moment and the rising sun and the breath of the wind and the dew on the grass and that feeling of emptied oneness, stretched out, open to the world at the end, just breathing.
You guys, Sera looks ridiculous doing yoga. She is wearing denim cut-offs and has that Siouxsie Sioux t-shirt and a fresh pair of fishnets and heavy black boot in the middle of July and athletic and lean though she may be (more than lean now: closer to starveling than lean) she has never, not once in her life, done yoga.
But what the hell.
She tries it, see? Laughs when she fucks it up, though her laughter is quiet and mostly inside herself because there's this knot of tension and this first trial is the hardest for her today, as it moves on and on and she grows more and more sharply conscious of her body, and how it moves, and the morning light, and she wants -
oh, she wants.
--
The night moves on; it is so very different for both of them. Jim finds enjoyment in the press of the crowd, in the pleasure of strangers, in the gleaming eyes of the people all around them, opening up from libation, movement, liberating themselves from the mundane for an evening, losing themselves in pleasures the Ecstatics - who so often lose themselves, whose Work always seems to involve that sort of loss, those things that make them slip-their-skin: and he fears that it could be like this forever, as he would, mindful of every moment, and he wonders Would that really be such a bad thing?
(Yesyesyesyes. - is Sera's only answer to the question she doesn't bloody well hear. Yes. And yes and yes.
Also this: yes. For fuck's sake, yes.)
They are so alike.
They are so very different.
The night is so sharp for her, so stark - see. She finds no genuine solace in the pleasures of strangers, in the press of the crowd, in the light gleaming in their eyes, in the furious energy of a dance floor or pit, in the glassy-eyed revelry of these lawyers and baristas and truck drivers and nursing students, in the clink of glasses, in the invitations extended, extended, and turned aside and deferred. Each serves to make her own desire and her own denial all the more keen, all the sharper and it is a physical thing that she is cultivating and it has a sharp and silver tip and a long half and she's pushing it through her skin like a needle and her heart like a spear and it is bright and lovely and painful and it opens her up from throat to belly as the night moves on,
but still, she finds him,
and they Work.
You guys, Sera looks ridiculous doing yoga. She is wearing denim cut-offs and has that Siouxsie Sioux t-shirt and a fresh pair of fishnets and heavy black boot in the middle of July and athletic and lean though she may be (more than lean now: closer to starveling than lean) she has never, not once in her life, done yoga.
But what the hell.
She tries it, see? Laughs when she fucks it up, though her laughter is quiet and mostly inside herself because there's this knot of tension and this first trial is the hardest for her today, as it moves on and on and she grows more and more sharply conscious of her body, and how it moves, and the morning light, and she wants -
oh, she wants.
--
The night moves on; it is so very different for both of them. Jim finds enjoyment in the press of the crowd, in the pleasure of strangers, in the gleaming eyes of the people all around them, opening up from libation, movement, liberating themselves from the mundane for an evening, losing themselves in pleasures the Ecstatics - who so often lose themselves, whose Work always seems to involve that sort of loss, those things that make them slip-their-skin: and he fears that it could be like this forever, as he would, mindful of every moment, and he wonders Would that really be such a bad thing?
(Yesyesyesyes. - is Sera's only answer to the question she doesn't bloody well hear. Yes. And yes and yes.
Also this: yes. For fuck's sake, yes.)
They are so alike.
They are so very different.
The night is so sharp for her, so stark - see. She finds no genuine solace in the pleasures of strangers, in the press of the crowd, in the light gleaming in their eyes, in the furious energy of a dance floor or pit, in the glassy-eyed revelry of these lawyers and baristas and truck drivers and nursing students, in the clink of glasses, in the invitations extended, extended, and turned aside and deferred. Each serves to make her own desire and her own denial all the more keen, all the sharper and it is a physical thing that she is cultivating and it has a sharp and silver tip and a long half and she's pushing it through her skin like a needle and her heart like a spear and it is bright and lovely and painful and it opens her up from throat to belly as the night moves on,
but still, she finds him,
and they Work.
But my heart is wild and my bones are steel
And I could kill you with my bare hands if I was free.
- Phosphorescent, Song for Zula
And I could kill you with my bare hands if I was free.
- Phosphorescent, Song for Zula