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Massimo Campigli, Three Idols, 1961
When I remember Sue Castigliano, I think of almost naked dancers
vaulting above the gold-tipped horns of Cretan bulls, to the sound of
waves breaking in the distance. Wandering with the ghosts of an
exploded island empire, I enter the doors of a library that I first
thought was an octopus. When I think of her, I see wheat bound in
sheaves, gourds hanging from a makeshift wooden peristyle, grapes
being stomped by rhythmic feet in vats. I think of the minute
preparations of a glad community in the month before a human
sacrifice.
When I remember her, I think of a face that encompasses multitudes,
whose each component is distinct, the dark face of the goddess,
projected against lowering clouds. I think of Ceres, of Inanna, of Isis, of
Coatlique, and of Oshun. I think of olive oil sleeping inside of
prehistoric jars, the Sibyl smoothing out her wrinkles in the shadow of
the arch of Constantine. I think of a young girl standing on a cliff above
the sea, the wind playing with her hair, as she listens for the voice of
her drowned lover.
Her body is the world tree. Her navel is Omphalos, the place of
interconnection. Her womb is the cave where stars can get changed
into their human suits. In her left palm Saturn, time’s comptroller, tilts
and revolves. The fingers of her right hand touch the Earth with a
gesture of abundance. And then, quite unexpectedly, she stands before
me in a robe. In her eyes, I can see ships sailing back and forth. There,
beneath the gigantic shadow of a wave, a wave that towers, still
swelling, up and up, they go in search of a dock that is nonexistent.
Above our heads: a roof, whose beams have disappeared. There is only
a charred corner. The shore is not far away. The astringent scent of salt
is softened by the scent of moss and rosemary. “Beloved, come. Like
fireflies, the ghosts of all past seers flicker in the dusk, where, if you
hurry, you might catch one in a jar. Our fingers touching, like our
souls, by its light we will read an elegy on the metastasis of Rome, on
the triumph of the Age of Iron, the last statement by a master who is
called by some “Anonymous.” Upon your lips, my breath: the elixir by
which your name will be alchemically removed.
“Many years have passed since the day that you were buried, facing
east, with a luminous stone clutched tightly in your hand, with much to
say that would never be expressed. It is reasonable that your knees
should start to tremble and give out. A drum beats in the distance, in
the labyrinth of your ear. My pulse suspends you. Are you dead, or are
you not, or is there some third alternative?
“In my eyes, you can see your culture, falling. Do not dare to look
away! A slow spiral has returned you to this spot, and it will do so once
again. You can even now feel how spaces open in your stomach, how
your heart breaks with the ocean, how the sky reroutes the tangles of
your nerves. And who is that small echo, now dancing on your tongue?
As you fall into my eyes, you can even now feel how your thoughts are
not your thoughts, how these thoughts belong to a figure that you lack
the strength to recognize, how the wind sucks the marrow from your
bones. There is more to fear than you know, but do not fear too much.
We are free, in this silence, to calmly see and then celebrate the worst.
Each throwing his/ her arms around the other, as the light fades, we
will weep.”
This is the role that my teacher acted out for me. It is not, of course,
who she was in her day-to-day-existence. In hindsight, my memory
manufactures images, which, no doubt, obscure far more than they
illuminate, and yet they point to something not entirely untrue.
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