Rodin's Legacy

"You alone are real to me."  

Lou Andreas-Salome

Holga CFN 120 / 120mm Fujifilm / iso 100
Spring 2012 / Lake Lure, NC

Then I remember watching a man and a woman - wary strangers - moving through aisles of books and glossy papers in a museum shop awkward in the silent room since it is closing time and all of Rodin's sweaty monuments will soon again be alone.

And I think of what Rodin may have said to Rilke and that it is written down somewhere and codified and glorified but I am too distant or too shallow to delve in.

Somehow the man catches a whiff of the woman’s body-smell and goes a little crazy and is transported back about thirty years to that time he could not count and the place he never left.

Who knows what was really spoken between the two and like a gong being struck the man’s chakra system is jolted and he gets this sweet churn in his lower chest like God has just kicked him.

Circling slowly like a summer trout waving behind a rock the man tries to get a second sense of her but that curious admixture of greediness and shame simply runs him out the door.

Music starts to play while his discord and confusion continue and traffic begins to flow like platelets of blood and buildings rise in the distant dusk and the man presses the accelerator and swivels his rear-view mirror the first of many times.

~