Author: pacquo

“All space lay before her, her direction dictated only by caprice.
She was almost the image of freedom, were it not for the Saturnian weight of her body and the abnormal span of her wings. However poised she seemed, especially at the take-on, one sensed the terror which motivated the daily flight.
She was at once obedient to her destiny and at the same time frantically eager to overcome it.

Each morning she soared aloft from her perch, as from some Himalayan peak; she seemed always to direct her flight towards some uncharted region into which, if all went well, she would disappear forever.
Each morning she seemed to carry aloft with her this desperate, last-minute hope; she took leave with calm, grave dignity, like one about to go down into the grave. Never once did she circle about the flying field; never once did she cast a glance backward towards those whom she was abandoning.

Nor did she leave the slightest crumb of personality behind her; she took to the air with all her belongings, with every slightest scrap of evidence which might testify to the fact of her existence. She didn’t even leave the breath of a sigh behind, not even a toe-nail.
A clean exit, such as the Devil himself might make for reasons of his own.

One was left with a great void on his hands. One was deserted, and not only deserted, but betrayed, inhumanly betrayed.
One had no desire to detain her nor to call her back; one was left with a curse on his lips, with a black hatred which darkened the whole day. Later, moving about the city, moving slowly in pedestrian fashion, crawling like the worm, one gathered rumours of her spectacular flight; she had been seen rounding a certain point, she had dipped here or there for what reason no one knew, she had done a tailspin elsewhere, she had passed like a comet, she had written letters of smoke in the sky, and so on and so forth.”.

(Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn, 1939)