Quiet Wars (Part 1)

So many have managed to capture his interest, however fleetingly.  But, to capture his imagination, there’s been just one in many years now.  To capture the imagination is to inspire, to allow just enough of a glimpse to build upon things that he cannot possibly know, yet does.

            She is confident and self assured but feels she should be more so.  She compensates with a certain intensity, a roiling placidity that she manifests in a variety of ways.  It’s in the slight tilt of her head during deliberative pauses when speaking in soft rich tones that almost hide the smoky resonance.  It’s in the dark gaze that strikes as a quick glance and thunders to a startling depth.  Anger? Desperation? Predation?  He can’t tell and she herself is likely unsure.  A hard pleading spills from her eyes.  But for what?

            She posses arresting beauty of which she is aware but seems to not fully grasp.  She sees that men notice her, when she notices them.  Women too, seem to take note and pay her some unspoken, gender-coded heed.  But she has no thought of the reasons or depth of those reasons.  She never gives it much thought for the simple reason that she fears that the conclusion she might reach would leave her uncomfortable- that those reasons ultimately would be tawdry and base.  And perhaps for some they were on that primal level.  But for most her effect was, at its essence, inspirational.  And what is inspiration if not uplifting?  So she passes through her life and, much to her own consternation, is by virtue of her beauty credited with the most admirable of qualities.

            And as he struggled to step out of the circle of her magnetic pull, he began to understand the dilemma posed by Dostoevsky:

How can I as a man begin with pure love, as for the Madonna,

                                            yet end with a rutting lust as for the whore?

            Making peace with that contradiction, he chose to obsess over the best part, the heavenly part that transcended all else in his close and quiet life.  That was when all seemed possible.  Not just possible- inevitable.  Eternity was inevitable, he knew that all along.  But in her he knew the nature of the eternal.  It was contained, experienced in each moment with her there.