The story I am about to tell is one a of a white french woman, whose name I will not tell. Her name is of no use, yet her trace on you will linger. We do know not who she is, only her story will be told. She is a lonely soul yet she knows how to me the right people. She is a woman you could meet waiting for a train, or drinking a coffee, forever in between two things, forever gazing ahead.
This is the story of the lives of those who disobey, who don’t accept the rules, who create new paths for themselves and others, generations to come. This is a fiction from reality, this is the myth of what evidently could be. This is a story of the past, but one that could be, now, and that ever will be.
Between Paris, Moscow, New-York and Mexico, the woman has met humans and will leave them behind, the woman has lived and she has survived.
The woman I’ve met in this story is a little bit you and a little bit all of us.
She has dreams, doubts and fears.
In the beginning of the story, she has no home and she has to flee. From Paris to Moscow, she goes looking for love, for another kind of life in order to find someone, somehow, to make her feel whole and seen, and supported and understood.
In between the lies humans tell to go through their lives, she enters her own road, full of dark corners and enlighted spaces. She has fallen in love with a ghost you seen and befriended an angel.
After a time spent in a life that was not hers, the woman has to flee again. In her will for a different way, she cheats and flies again . The others, the women who disobeyed, stayed behind without her. They were warmly protected and stayed free.
In the plane taking her from Moscow to New-York, the woman saw herself, clearly, fundamentally, alone. She new that newness did not come easily, she knew she had to do it all over again : the love, the survival, the friendship.
In the city that never sleeps, the woman encountered realities that would make her fear for her life, facts of poverty and exclusion she would never forget.
Wandering in the streets of Brooklyn and The Queens, she found herself naked, ready for a new beginning. You see, this story has no end, and it has no beginning. This fact is what told her to run and reach out for help. And so she went, she opened herself up to meet the people who would see all that she could offer, with her voice, with her humanity.
Far away from home, emptied of most of her memories, she kept in her heart the traces of an old love. Within her, in her powerful center and at the tip of her fingers, the love she once felt would not leave her. She woke up with it and fell asleep remembering a time that was forever gone.
After a while, the woman heard something or she read it somewhere, in a book that found her. She read that if she wanted to, she could be free once more. She read between the lines and then she understood: however, she wanted, she had to find a way, she had to find her way to express herself, her dreams, her doubts, her fears.
In the midst of a long and cold fall, she fell upon a man, in the middle of an overachieving town. The man, surrounded by his fellow humans, was flying in the air with music all around. Freed from any restraints, the man was dancing, he was catching invisible fire in his liberated movements. In front of her pain, the was man telling her, wordlessly, that her too, could dance.
In the middle the New-York City winter, the woman started to dance. Up in a room with no door and no hurry, she unraveled herself. Dancing with no music or with strong cord melodies, she unlocked something that was hidden. You see, this woman knew how strong she was but she did not know that she could forgive. Through dancing, through letting go, she allowed her body and her soul to finally connect. She opened herself to the infinite power of self-love and felt pain in places she didn’t know could feel.
After a year, or maybe two, whilst the world was becoming something that would know no return, the woman was dancing everyday, in the streets, the parks, in classes and at home. Surrounded by the disobedient beings of her life, the women and the queers, she learnt how to be truly, living. She fell in love again, with the fire of another. She let herself be touched without the shadow of the ghost she once couldn’t let go.
But the woman was not free yet you see, she was longing for revenge. The things that she saw, the violence she lived, the story she overheard and the ones that was told to her made her believe that something else could be. That she could live in a world where peace was the highest value, where difference was celebrated and unity the basis of our interactions.
The society this woman was living in was murdering women, sentencing innocents to years in jail but above all, she knew that the power of greediness and fearful men was to be taken over, in a way that was symbolic and direct.
Dancing for her, had been the revealer of her inner power, of the wildness of her spirit and the greatness of her possibilities. Watching the queers, the artists all around her, she knew they were the same but did not have the same opportunities. She knew the inequalities and wanted to do something so they could have more, so they to could live wholly, powerfully, emotionally, free.
With revenge in mind, she did something she was not supposed to. She gathered what she knew, her skills and her talents. She became someone else and she did it amazingly. Up in a glass skyscraper, she went to meet a man. A very powerful man, with a lot of money and a grasp of the world that very few can claim to have. Dressed like a young innocent girl, with a soft voice and no interest whatsoever, the woman went and cheated the system. She came in with a piece of genius, she entered a world she didn’t know and that exactly is what made her succeed in the robbing of the riches.
She went to sell a piece of art that was left in the dark for ages. She made herself naïve, and the man fell for it. She went for money you see, though she did not care for it. What she wanted the woman, what to create envy, curiosity, excitement in the eye of he, who would give a lot, to keep the piece of genius she had brought with her eyes the colour of candy.
Everything she planned happened accordingly. The man gave her money, he trusted her and agreed to everything she asked. But the woman knew you see, that you cannot be free unless you give back the power you have found. So once again she flee, heartbroken, after the world killed one more of her family. The revenge tasted sour, the heart was heavy and the woman, in another plane, to another city, wondered what she did and if she chose wisely.
Arrived in Mexico city, with money and her freedom-to-be, the woman was lost, lonely but fearless. She had conquered, you see, a domain that was not hers. Now, she was a new kind of fugitive. She was fleeing from her demons as well from so-called justice, the one of the powerful, of the money-owning men of New-York City.
Immersed in the colours and music and history and sensuality of Mexico City, the woman felt the urge to absolve herself, the meet again the child within her so she could hear once more what she had read in books, what made her a dancer, a free soul, a rebellious human being.
After the first morning, pushed by some kind of energy, she decided she would go meet the sacred waters of the sacred mountains. The city was to much you see, it was reminding her of every time she left, of everyone she ever left behind. Lonely but hopeful, with her cash money and her secrets, she traveled to the south and dreamt once more of another kind life of life.
The ellipses of this woman’s life formed smoke in the air, and bubbles in the water already waiting for her. She heard the call in the forest, she closed her eyes and walked, trustfully, through the woods of her future. In that place had been happening miracles of life and death and the woman knew. Up there in the mountains, the could feel the spirits of the wild women, of the goddesses and their deepest pain cleared in the sacred water. She talked to the spirits, the heard their story and she met the water.
Finally I am here, she thought and you see, I am telling you now, I was surprised too that she finally did. Slowly, she entered the water, she went in and undressed, she went in and under. She looked up to the sky and she say the highest rocks surrounding her, she saw the wild vegetation and the waterfall waiting for her. The woman danced under water as if she would never danced again. She met a part of herself down there and she let her tears drown in the sacred waters. She melted with it, she made love with it, she died, yes and then she was born again.
Riding down the mountain after death and rebirth, the woman knew she had to free herself in one final act. She had conned the powerful but could not keep the price. The world had to be balanced, she had to give back, and then she had to go back home, for the first time of her life you, she chose to come back.
Under the pouring rain, at night, Mexico City did not say a word to her. She had nowhere to go, but she knew what to do. She walked, her clothes and her mind soaked with a kind a peace she was discovering, the woman headed to meet sisters. She knew they were somewhere; she knew that if she followed her deepest instinct she would find them.
Knocking the door three times, one of the sisters opening the heavy door. Everything in there was dark, filled with mutters of the women talking of secrets the men would never know. The women were the women the world despise, those the world does not want to know about. The woman was with them, she was with her own, the whores, the freest spirits of all : all gathered here, in a dark building in the heart of one of the most dangerous cities in the world.
Without asking questions, the sisters let the woman in. They let her sleep in a corner and even dried her tears. She was here for something, and would not leave before it she did what she needed to do. The moon was high and its light entered through a hole in the roof. That was the last night the woman felt heavy. In the morning, she got up, thought for herself a little and left her bags full of cash money. She left a note too, just a few words to say goodbye and went on, away, on her own little road.
The future was uncertain, she had no belongings but she had her life and her beliefs. She had her dance, and here body and her dreams and hopes. She had no fear anymore, because she knew that she could be whoever she wanted to be. She had had her revenge and she died because of it. You see, this story started somewhere but we don’t know its beginning. This story has no end because the woman, once again, disappeared. She was one of the wild ones, she had one home and one home only and it was her body. With it, she could feel the word entirely and she could be, simply, a soul with no envy. She had nothing left to seek outside her herself, she knew, and for the first time, she did not want to flee.
A.P
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