Tanya and the Wind

Artwork by zanara

The wind woke her. Tanya remembered the washing outside!

She ran out half-naked, in only a nightdress. The cold pierced her and the first drops dug into her. The house was planted in the middle of the field, completely separate from the village. As far as the eye could see, ink-black clouds were crawling low over the ground. Oily streams of dense rain were preparing to pour themselves over the dry arms of the trees. The field behind the house was bathed in golden light springing from under the ground. The steel line of the horizon was tearing the thin rip between the concrete air and the glittering wings of the wheat stalks.

She began taking down the clothes from the line quickly. It was night but it was light as day. There was something in the air, something uncommon in the gusts of the wind, she could feel it. As if solid, powerful hands were trying to catch her, envelop her whole. The air thickened, forming huge, juicy fingers around her body. The wind whistled and began swirling around her.

He began flirting like a stag with a doe, like a drop of dew with the sunlight. First he entered her eyes and ears. Penetrated her thoughts. He seized them, jumbled them, and opened her mind without permission. Opened wide all the windows of her thoughts, invaded every nook and cranny and completely disarranged her ideas. He created weightlessness in her soul. He wrapped himself around her breath and made her smile. Tanya remembered how long she had waited for this passion to enter her life. Not in vain did the people in the village call her the lonely gull. So many desperate nights she had stood at the window, looking at the frozen landscape outside. Without hope for movement, change, sweetness. And here he now was, in all his strength, ecstasy and vigour. He was here.

He caressed her skin, slid his invisible lips over her body. Gently glided between her fingers and she dropped the gathered laundry. He took it up and breathed life into it. The clothes filled with movement and began twisting their slender bodies high above the ground. Their patterns created new shapes and states, like a kaleidoscope in the sky.

Tanya was at the bottom of it, admiring the performance. While the wild dance swirled in the sky, Tanya felt how the embrace of the storm became stronger and more passionate. She felt herself swimming in his airy desire.

That night Tanya conceived a Universe. A universe with the eye of a typhoon, an eye like a black hole from which poured out a new world that connected with the umbilical cord of life.

She did not feel alone anymore, she was the wind’s woman. She felt how all of nature loved her. Each night he came to check on her. She lived in the ocean of his presence and the air electrified by his breath and passion. He lived around her, opened the doors before her, brought her bouquets of beautiful flowers floating in space.

Tanya lined up numerous little weathervanes in the field. She wanted to know and see from afar when her husband returned home. And each time when he crept in, all of them rustled softly like hundreds of hands in greeting.

She felt chosen, special and more secure than ever before. As if a divine being had sown magic in the womb of her soul.

She was in love. And the love for the great element has no comparative measure in any human dimension. She felt like she had control over all his might. She had the hurricanes and cyclones as her guardians, she had power over an unrestrained force. This love was all that Tanya had ever wished for.

The eye inside her grew quickly. She felt the thrusts and eruptions of this new world. Laughter and dancing, nightmares and catastrophes. There were so many things happening every minute. Tanya gradually began transforming. She looked like an astronomical map. Her organs formed constellations. Her cells recreated the laws of sacred geometry and formed quite unusual dependencies and shapes.

She had become transparent and was becoming witness to the tiniest of movements and changes inside. She watched sunsets and sunrises, movements of suns and planets. She felt the splash of the waves and the contractions of the tides.

At night she was like a walking candle in the dark. Like a large firefly in the field. She stood on the seashore and shone like a beacon for the lost souls out there. A flame in a human body singing its quiet song.

On one such night she gave birth to their child. It separated from her like a light stream and began shining like a burning symbol against the dark sky. A sign with its own will and purpose, with all its multifaceted meanings. At first glance simple and slight, but every curve of its body, every movement announced that it carried the load of a myriad other meanings. It was an ancient symbol that had gathered the old and the new into one, with a new meaning and purpose. It was infinity collected in a shape, life in the process of dying. It was the child of the wind.

She knew that she had just given birth to one of the many letters of god. One piece of his alphabet to be written into the book of life.

A gentle breeze almost bashfully blew and carried away the glowing child and then a complete calm set.

No matter how long she waited and time passed, the field remained silent. She increasingly focused her thoughts on the sky, until one day Tanya herself became a windmill, waiting to be awakened by the breath of love.

And somewhere there, far away, the wind rushed towards new shores. Because in some remote and foreign field, illuminated in a strange light, a storm was starting and a woman had come out in the middle of the night, half-naked, and begun collecting the laundry outside.

Wriiten by ZANARA /Translated by Reberta

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Love Story

artwork by ZANARA

The exhibition opening has just finished. The hall is full of people.

I have only been working here for a couple of months and I am a little nervous because I know almost no one. I smile and create the impression that I am calm and right where I should be.

The building is new and white. Marble ceilings and walls, half of the property has huge windows facing the ocean. Beautiful and a little sinister. I have never enjoyed feeling so bare and somehow the centre of attention. These places, however, make you feel exactly like that.

I speak with people, I show them around the paintings. One dips me in a red and yellow mood. Time is getting on. I transfer from the inner hall to the one that is overhanging the water. My road passes through an internal glass bridge. Here it is almost empty. I stop in front of a large canvas with generous turquoise-violet strokes.

A small, plain woman comes near me. Thin, short hair, pale-pink cardigan. I begin my usual speech aimed at potential clients. She is not listening to me. She has turned her head the other way. She suddenly turns towards me and I see her dark, burning eyes.

“Do you know about the group of the Gardeners?” she asks.

“No. Are they independent artists?”

She smiles. “They plant living art.”

“Pardon?” I think I have misheard.

“They gather in the forest not far from here. They come from everywhere. They stay for a week there, in the wilderness. They choose special trees and take branches and roots from them. They whittle human figures. Small. Intricate. On the last day they organise a midnight ritual, in which they plant the figures in the ground. Then they go back to wherever they have come from. Their next meeting the following year is in a different place, somewhere in the world…” she looks at me, smiling wider.

“And that is all?” I ask. Now I know I have to be careful.

“Yes. If you don’t count the fact that these figures grow out of the earth to true size. They tear themselves from their root and head off into the world to settle down.”

I look around because I feel cold, a little crazy and uncomfortable. I think about the only “burial” that I have carried out myself. We were very young, our souls pure. With my Love we decided to get married in secret. We went to the forest in the moonlight and gave our vows of faithfulness and spiritual connection to the Forest, Sky and the Gods. Many years later, when we broke each other’s hearts, I went to the same forest, buried our pictures and asked for a “divorce”. I never thought about whether they “grew” and began living another, parallel life, remaining married in spite of us?

The woman next to me has disappeared. I am left stunned and unfulfilled. I try to find her but she is nowhere in the gallery. I go up to a colleague and question her. She knows nothing about her or about the group for “living art”.

I am busy for the next several days but I cannot stop thinking about the strange encounter at the gallery. One morning I make up my mind and head to the forest. I aim to find the children of the artist-sculptors.

I wander around all day. I have a picnic. I don’t see anyone or anything. I peer at the ground, dig at the soil here and there with my feet. Stare at the crowns and branches of the trees. Nothing that resembles living people.

Towards evening, a little disappointed, I prepare to leave. An older couple comes towards me. I decide to question them before I leave, maybe they know something. They approach me. The faces of both are lined, they have a dull tan but pleasantly smiling expressions. The woman has a beautiful scarf in yellow and grey. We strike up a conversation. They have not heard of any rituals or living roots.

After a bit, we wish each other a pleasant evening and I reach out a hand for goodbye. For a second I am convinced that their hands are knit together like intertwined roots. They only nod and walk away. I continue forward, but this time slowly and uncertainly, as if I know that I am missing something important.

What are they doing here in the almost complete darkness? This is not the time for a walk. And these hands of theirs. I turn and head back. I call out to them. They are nowhere to be found. I look around a bit more and decide that there is no point in any of this.

Just then I see the woman’s scarf! I stop and carefully inspect the two trees intertwined in a strong embrace. The scarf seems to be wrapped around what looks like shoulders. I tenderly tie it so the wind won’t take it.

I hurry home. I never return to the forest again. But I go to the place where we had gotten married. I find the secret spot and dig up the earth… the box with our pictures is empty. But at the spot have grown two thin trees with hands intertwined.

Written by Zanara/ Translated by Roberta