The Creators Do the Kali Shiva Dance
Rhythmic pounding filled the air, hallowing the sun’s rise. Today, a woman. She, now a she, caressed the contours of of her cheek, letting the braille signatures of skin texture introduce her senses to who she was now. Compare and contrast, smooth skin with the subtle furring, reminder of the animal in every human. Young now, old yesterday, human or not, dark, light, every thing she had ever been passed through her mind. No matter, no consequence, no permanence.
It was the same thing at breakfast. Cold milk, choco-crispie cereal slid around her tongue and down her throat like the fish she had — yesterday? — beans and toast before and a thousand other times with a thousand other dishes. Sometimes she was alone. A lone figure populating a lone story, struggling over obstacles with her own blood and sweat. Sometimes there were others, a family to protect, their wide-mouthed, wholesome grins mocking foreshadowing of the rictus smile in store for them. She cursed motivation in a long slow chant, using the names of the mothers, fathers, sons and daughters she had been as the beads on her rosary of remembrance.
The names blended together, sonorous, as the rich staccato vibrated through her, enveloping her. She could feel it, heavy and warm, as she moved through her daily assignments. Rituals of today overlay the rituals of yesterdays. Student, mother, lawyer, angel; which one was she now? It didn’t matter. Tomorrow she could be someone else, somewhere else. Even then, she sighed with relief as she pulled her keys out of her pocket at day’s end. “Home,” she breathed and caught herself smiling.
Pausing, she scrutinized the horizon, looking for a sign of what tomorrow could bring. Nothing moved ’til she turned back to the door, catching them from the corner of her eye. Misty giants, two, danced through her world, each footfall creating a path that shone brightly, each gesture moving the winds that blew her hair. Male and female, swaying and stamping in time to the wild staccato that made the sun rise and fall. Sweat fell down off their sinuous bodies, shimmering like a diamond and landed, becoming a man, a house, a dog, any one of a thousand things. One at a time, they touched these new creations, she spreading her dark glow, he, his light. A man, haloed in a darker than black glow, turned to enter a warm house, whispering of the gifts of madness and destruction. Pausing, the raising crescendo of screams, the demiurges kiss, mingling dark and light nimbi, then twirl apart.
She closed her eyes to the sacred sight, flinging herself over the threshold. Trembling, she pressed the door closed, trying hard not to remember how beautiful it all was. Beautiful movements, moving through this world and every other. Beautiful, beautiful destruction.