Cinnabar and Curry
...written on 12.09.01, @ 6:30 p.m.
Sun December 9, 2001
I glanced quickly down the side street as I crossed to the other side. A flash of red caught my eye, and curious, I diverted my steps towards the narrow alleyway. Absentmindely, I raked the fingertips of my left hand across the coarse sandstone of the building on the corner, feeling the textured hills and valleys of its wall and losing myself in the oppressive heat of the noonday sun. My head was bent down until I felt a cool shadow on my neck.
I stopped and looked up to see a tattered green awning over a recessed entrance that appeared to lead to a storage room of sorts. The opening was wide and the stones beneath my sandaled feet were broad and smooth. As I stepped in from the glaring sun, I had to readjust my sight to the contrasting darkness. My eyes swept from one side of the room to the next, the idea that I might be trespassing didn't occur to me, and upon judging the room to be empty of the object that I thought attracted me to begin with, I turned to go.
It was then that the object seemed to break out of the surrounding wall to stand before me. I was stunned. It was a young man of about 24 years old, dressed in nothing but a raggedy pair of shorts. I couldn't discern their original color however because the young man was covered from forehead to toe in a dark red cinnabar powder, with black mop top locks curling to his shoulders.
He stood straight before me and opened his eyes, the stark white orbs with a black one in the middle startling me. Such a penetrating glance, I thought, as I looked down at the cinnabar powder caked around his full lips. He must have left the other revelers, who, bedecked in the same colored powder, tossed it on all passers-by inviting them to join in the celebration of one of their major deities.
The sound of a flute began to permeate my consciousness as I watched the young man sway to and fro, his lithe body moving to the music. His taut muscles arched along his shoulders and back as he curved and dipped in his dance. Snaking up into a thin rigid pole and then melting in a puddle of wonderful red, all movements there and in between were soft and sensuous and I felt they were entreating me. Entreating me to . . .
The music's pace began to quicken as did the movements of my private dancer. Spinning, running, jumping, and flailing, tears of cinnabar from this human centrifuge made stinging landings on my bare skin. I was dizzied by the speed, by the beauty, by the rusty rivulets of sweat on his body.
He slowed and I saw his ruby arms stretch and beckon me closer, beckoning me to the dance, beckoning me to the trance. I slipped into his dusty crimson embrace and matched my movements with his. His hands went to my face and I could smell curry on his fingers. I reached behind his neck to grab a black ringlet, but he twisted such that my fingernails scraped his neck, leaving sharp traces there in the martian ore.
I closed my eyes and turned, feeling his arms willow at my sides, smelling the rising dust of our dance, enjoying the cool heat of our intertwining bodies. I smiled to myself and turned round to face him once more, but he was gone!
I stumbled into the sunlight of the afternoon. Dizzy from the dark, dizzy from the dance, dizzy from the memory of his curried hands on my face.
Note: This piece was inspired by a photo from photographer Steve McCurry's collection, "South Southeast" and Suzanne Teng's CD, "Mystic Journey".