Anna's gaze
Have you ever felt that gaze that without permission pierces through all the layers of clothing, skin, flesh and soul and touches the purest essence of you? Has it ever happened to you that thanks to that ray of light coming from the gaze of the other you have understood your own existence, the reason for your eyes on your face, and your mouth and lips, the reason for your heartbeat in your chest, and your place in the world? Have you felt that your center is no longer yours, because it never was, and that it only responds to a stimulus, to the certainty of its existence, that it thinks of you, that it is approaching, that it may be around the next corner? I am not talking about physical contact or carnal love, not yet. I am talking about a journey of the back of the soul, of the spirit of desire that wishes to be admired, loved, and crossed by that look again. Have you felt like a flower? Have you felt like a field? Have you felt all center and all expansion at the same time?
The first time I felt this way was in Moscow. It could be coincidence, it could be some ancestor playing a macabre joke on me, it could be that Tolstoy's novel obsessed me to such an extent that in that same station where Anna felt that her life made sense and at the same time was rushing towards the most torn chapter of her life, on that same floor I saw him, the one who did not ask permission to cross his eyes with mine and that alone was enough for him to reach the boilers of my being.
In honor of that first time above the little first times, the one that resembles the one in movies and novels and that not everyone gets to feel in a lifetime, in honor of that crossing of glances in the same space where yours was, I want to dedicate this collection to Anna Karenina, a literary woman whose soul has surpassed the paper and although she lies locked in a book, the beat of her passion is the refrain of every mortal being who falls in love with an intensity more proper of gods than of humans. We possess neither souls nor bodies capable of manipulating those proportions. Those of us who have felt that look before, long before skin touched skin, know that Anna Karenina is our flag and the reflection of the fatal destiny of those blessed and punished to feel skin-deep.
Whoever plays with fire burns, burns, burns, melts despite the fine print and any warning.