Ecuador, in airport.... about 1978. 63 year old Moritz Thomsen observes
"Motionless on a plastic couch across from me, staring at the floor, sits a woman in her middle twenties. She has straight, sun-streaked hair caught up and clipped at the back, great very clear, very dark brown eyes, and she is dressed with the practical smartness of someone who knows how to travel; tan slacks, a faded safari jacket; at her feet a basket loosely stuffed with woven tapestries from Otavalo. She is beautiful, but what is more impressive than her smartness or her beauty is her grief. In that half hour as the room gradually fills with travelers she sits in a catatonic stillness, frowning at the floor, looking at no one and lost in the profound and desolate meditation of a woman whose love affair has just ended very badly. Looking at her I feel the pity that one feels at the sight of a wounded animal, and I fight the impulse to sit down by her and take her hand. Impossible, of course; she is firmly locked within her impregnable grief. Studying her face I realize that I know no one who could be worthy of her- and begin to glow with the power of a new insight: that the world has changed, that men have changed, that men can no longer match the potentialities of the women they pursue and, having won, cannot permanently cherish." (The Saddest Pleasure: A Journey On Two Rivers. Moritz Thomsen)
No comments:
Post a Comment