Capítulo V. The Right to Repair. Poetics of Water and Forgiveness.

“Dreams pass into the reality of action.

From the actions stems the dream again;

and this interdependence is producing the highest form of living.”

Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 3 (1939–1944).

“Where have you hidden,Beloved,

and left me with a groan?

Like the stag you fled,having wounded me;

I went out after you crying,

and you were gone.”

St. John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle.

The body feels changes in latitude before the mind can even process them. Celebrating my birthday for the fourth time under the sweltering August heat fractured my biological memory: celebrate myself in the rain and in the seclusion of the austral south, in contrast to the lethargy and the need for the outdoors of the Barcelona summer, the very one that, year after year with its claustrophobic humidity, has imposed a compulsory truce on my intellect. From that involuntary quietude, I was compelled to engage in an exercise of pure presence: emptying myself of the excess and waiting for September’s sober lucidity so that the will to live might once again restore martial order.

The night of my birthday, I dreamed that I finally found the occasion to wear the black velvet coat I bought for twenty euros at the Mercat dels Encants. In the dream, it was night, and in the living room of a typical Eixample apartment, I sat with discreet nervousness in front of N. I asked him about his animals, seeking shelter in the comfort of trivialities, but his reply in Arabic dismantled my calculation of casual talk: “أنا روحي حلوة” (My soul is sweet). I guess his exuberant Sun in Taurus set the tone for my new cycle. I met to celebrate twice, received two bouquets of flowers, and ate two different cakes. I suppose it’s time to recognize sweetness, even if it’s in the excess of love in a tangible way. There’s a physical revelation in understanding that spaces of discipline and darkness are deeply capable of sheltering tenderness.

The same principle guides my spiritual and intellectual quests: light in the darkness. Studying the mysticism of St. John of the Cross and engaging in dialogue with members of various religious orders related to Catholicism allowed me to understand that the dark night is not a spiritual weakness, but a large, heavy, and sometimes rusty door through which kenosis, the radical self-emptying articulated by the early Greek mystics, may strip us of our rigidities: a deliberate detachment from the ego in order to allow meaning to emerge, to submit to pain knowing it is transitory, to open the wound and reflect upon it. In the architecture of consented pain, when I withdraw from the center, the counterpart can reach the reflection of their most intimate self. In this unusual capacity of help, I have trained my gaze to recognize the desire of others, but only God knows how many times I have evaded my own. As in the verse by St. John of the Cross, with the will of the wounded stag leaving a moan in its wake, I enter the forest once more, searching for a ray of sunlight that will reveal to me the desire I carry on my back.

This summer I dared to bring the liturgy of pain into my private space, it was as vertiginous as learning to walk on the slope of an erupting volcano. Apparently, in a D/s relationship, it is not by the vulnerability of two beings who long to be loved. A year ago, in the shadow of an eclipse, I opened the chamber doors to a man from distant lands whose first shy glance immediately summoned my tenderness. What began as an enigma decanted into an inevitable metamorphosis: a Mistress learning to decipher the bewildering sensibility of her sweet puppy, and a puppy embracing the fragility of a woman.

Before agreeing to navigate this bond, I demanded of myself to set my own house in order. As the date of our reunion approached, the feeling of walking down the corridor of a slaughterhouse turned into an anxious desire to be there: what was the worst that could happen? Both the insight and the lived experience justified the daring. During the days we shared, my dreams were populated by dense presences. On the first night, I dreamed that an indigenous Mesoamerican woman came to clean my home, her name was Coatlicue, the same name as the Mexica deity of the earth, fertility, life, death, and rebirth. The archaic telluric force in its purest state: the mother who gives birth to the gods and the cosmos, but also the devouring womb that demands the return of organic matter to its depths to restart the cycle. Today I understand the unconscious clarity of that vision: it was the exact moment when I consented to make way for compassion, allowing the earth to order and care for what is just beginning to grow.

The somatic test of this transformation took place at sea, under the weight of a dense plutonian transit. As we swam out to sea toward the buoys, I heard his voice in a tone halfway between a complaint and a joke: “You’re too much.” Immediately, my nervous system triggered the wounded animal’s instinctive retreat: to swim furiously toward the open horizon to camouflage my rage in the vastness of the water. Wanting to flee on the spot, like an animal already wounded by many arrows, one more strike and I might collapse on the shore, ready for microorganisms and worms to turn my body into fertile soil for poppies. But in the surrounding water, time slowed its rush. As I turned and saw him swimming behind me with the stubborn calm of one who fears no fatigue so long as the bond is restored, my escape lost its meaning. The sea and its embrace acted as a double containment, both physical and emotional. Feeling the rage and being held by the sea, to turn around and face him. The right to repair: to set aside self-sufficiency and allow myself the vertigo of giving forgiveness with pain. Oh, Kyria eleison, have mercy on me.

I feel it’s time to return to the canvas. After two years of psychoanalytic therapy, I suppose that’s enough time for my unconscious to leave behind the torment of compulsively painting sad women, turning their backs on the world and accompanied by guardian animals. I can already feel the urge to pick up a brush, especially now, on these last hot afternoons when I still can’t concentrate on intellectual matters. Painting on an intimate scale is a task that can be completed in a few days without overthinking. If the desolate women return, I will welcome them without reproach: there is a therapeutic dimension to accepting what emerges from one’s own hand, even when its content reflects the harsh circumstances of life.

Like in the myth of the bluebird, which is tirelessly sought all over the world only to discover that it was waiting right at home, a discovery impossible without having searched for it everywhere first, inner sovereignty demanded that I surrender my own pain: not to avoid the sting, but to lick the wound, look it in the face, and take responsibility for it. A D/s relationship to connect with physical and emotional pain. The audacity to dismantle the defenses that took so much effort to build: to recognize that allowing oneself to be cared for is to consecrate an exchange where devotion can be mutual and affection does not require mutilating one’s own strength. To love without armor and allow the other’s hand to touch the scar without trying to hide it, knowing that the most noble surrender is the one that does not fear its own vulnerability. On those first nights of September that finally bring a cool breeze, as the air from the fan grazes my feet and the hypnotic atmosphere of Juana Aguirre's “Claroscuro” plays on a continuous loop, the prayer of autumn becomes clear: to accept that love is a luminous presence that steps forward when the soul, awake and whole, finally dares to rest, leaving behind the days of severe hyper-independence.