1. CADENCE

I could be talking of the usual fog at night, the bright, distorted reflections on my window, but I will not. I have no time to lose. I am learning to breath.

This brings about the cadence. Breathing, the eternal circular motion, the blood beating on my temples. Everything fits in one of those circles. Convulsion and serenity, storms and the quiet waters again. I realize now that words will not do the job, poor things. Not even the utmost discipline will force them to do this job.

But music might, this is why I return to the cadence. I climb to my terrace as I have done before. As soon as I sense the storm is coming, I climb the stairs and wait for the music. Today, a piece of paper or cardboard hit the door with fury, several times. So I climb there and wait for the music that will bring everything together. Eventually. Will it, really? There is no time for questioning, no room for doubt. Of course it will.

The cadence does not exist, really. I have been fooling myself with it. Teachers spoke about it, and good students just take its existence for granted. They even give you formulas and types, teach you to recognize their various forms. But they-do-not-exist, I know now. Everything flows, and the cadence as well.

The cadence is a trap, a black hole, a total gravity point that swallows everything. If you allow it. The trick is never stopping, to keep all the parts in motion at all times. If heavens were to stop, the world would end. Of course you stop now and then, but you do that while keeping everything in motion, like a juggler. Jugglers never stop, even when they barely move. You just stop definately when you are going to die. That is the cadence, really. In the meantime, we live in a vortex, or a poem that existed before the wind started to blow. One gets used to it.

So I follow the wordless advice of a wise man I met, and let everything speak, while observing all around. I keep breathing, I tilt my head to one side. If I do not see, I change the angle. Sometimes, tears cleanse the waters and then you see.

The Music. As I expected, cadences amount to nothing. The Music lands softly like a small bird, legs touching several times the ground, wondrous act of magic, drifting from the air to the earth in the most natural way. A flutter of wings softens the landing, makes it seamless. The last touch on the ground serves as the impulse for a new take-off, you see? Inverted anacrusa, sun of the southern hemisphere. Cadences do not exist really. They are just the carcass of a rather useless theoretical invention. Instead wasting the time analizing them, we should be learning to fly, to breath, to be. Wings, wind, light. Movement. Awareness.

The horizon could only be horizontal. Light is light, weightless. Wings are used to fly, sure, but also to protect, to revive, to caress. Words are also winged beings, or can be. I know the power of words, seemingly, and it feels like knowing the alchemist's secret. I may know the secret, right. But deep inside, I know words do not compare with a glance, with a color, with a gesture. The regard wins my heart, while words can only defeat. Words can be like the cadence, even less than nothing, fragile petals crunching under the feet of the dancers.

Yet,  I do not want to sound ungrateful. How would you hear me without them, dear reader? What Would We Write Without Words?

From the corner of my window, a dark memory filters in. I do not reject it. I impose its presence on myself, like a voluntary nightmare to fight the mud, the sleep, the oblivion. I want it fixed on my skin, like a tattoo.

Indelebly stamped, like a statue.

Petrified, like my ship.