Between Insight and Surrender

And as the afterglow of my pleasure dissolved into the vastness, there was your breath and mine—paced into the breathing of nature. You lay half on top of me and played with my tips like a dreamy god. May I say that? I worshipped you, though from a high seat of my own divinity.

A falcon circled above us.

Erosion as a form of truth—we spent the night at El Tovar Lodge, a hotel built in 1905 in the National Park Rustic style. Its manner was a blend of Swiss chalet, Norwegian hunting lodge, and Victorian hotel. Dark wood, heavy beams, leather furniture, taxidermy, handmade chandeliers. Theodore Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, and Oprah Winfrey had stayed here.

A thunderstorm moved across the plateau. The air was filled with juniper scents. The hotel lay two thousand meters above sea level and offered dramatic views and vistas.

We sank into armchairs in which American government crises had already been discussed. El Tovar Lodge had a salon with a fireplace, massive furniture, and colonial Navajo blanket décor. Impeccably dressed married couples were fulfilling a lifelong dream in this room. A grand seigneur leafed distractedly through a National Geographic. Undoubtedly, the youngest couple present occupied his thoughts. He shaded his interest. I noted the extra attention. It offered a secondary stimulus I could easily have done without. Sometimes you touched me tenderly.

Erotic punctuation/Tender visitation

A path away from the routes. No information board, no souvenir shop, no asphalt. Only ochre-red earth, blue sky, and primordial silence.

The Vermilion Cliffs belong to the Colorado Plateau. They stretch south of the Paria River, between Marble Canyon to the east and the Kaibab Plateau to the west. The glowing red sandstone reliefs are deposits of an ancient sea of dunes. For Indigenous peoples, the cliffs are among the sacred places. They are portals to spaces in which the world becomes permeable to forces that lie beyond the visible.

After days in the Grand Canyon, my store of metaphors ran dry. Everything was at least grand. The idea of creation in stone—the geological prologue in cross-section—the habituation to the sacred set in.

The Grand Canyon was a cosmic scar. Time could not close it. I felt more akin to the phenomena in this labyrinth of epochs than to my origins. I explored you, moved by the question of whether our shared initiation might be the starting point of a harmonious marriage. I advanced cautiously, so far content with your courtship. You gave me no reason to fear that, for you, I might not be the most beautiful and the cleverest woman on earth. You carried me on the hands of your thoughts. My happiness lay close to your heart. My pleasure was your delight.

I received you with all my senses. Every sign was meaningful.

I loved our erotic punctuation. It was so subliminal that it even set my gums aflame.

Wind in juniper bushes. I wore the black cloth on my right wrist. For days you had not brought it into play. Now I did. You could not know what it meant. In the end, I didn’t know myself.

You had set me on the trail of codes and fetishes and opened up for me a culture of intimate appointments. Only now did I notice that you were wearing your snakeskin boots with their braggadocious Texas emblems. The boots contradicted your style. That was how U.S. drilling engineers presented themselves—peacock males risen from the working class, indulging their pariah longings at the all-inclusive buffet of existence their ancestors had missed.

Was it a question, an answer, a statement, a hint? Did you dream of an arrangement under the blazing sun in which the boots belonged to the staging?

Then we stood before Shaman’s Gallery.

Shaman’s Gallery is a wall in Tuckup Canyon, a remote side canyon of the Grand Canyon. There you find prehistoric pictographs, presumably created by shamans three thousand years ago. The images show extravagant cephalopods and Stone Age ETs. They form a prospect suspended between mythic and mystic.

Breakfast in the El Tovar Dining Room

The hall was wood-paneled, solemn, and old. The waiters wore black vests; the tables were laid with linen napkins and silver pots. Above the panoramic window hung a painted ornamental frieze: condors, pines, rock strata. The Grand Canyon glowed in colors between rose quartz and bloodstone.

You let me go first; your hand on my back reminded me of a smoldering moment barely half an hour earlier. It felt as though I were balancing on an inner line, drawn by our love.

We were the only casually dressed guests. I ordered for both of us, as we had agreed in the room.

“Two Eggs Benedict. Medium. Fresh grapefruit juice. And Earl Grey with a hint of bergamot.”

I lay stretched out on the bed, naked, the blanket pushed aside. I felt ordered, clear. I felt you with my entire being and felt, in turn, recognized by you with your entire being. So much happiness was almost overwhelming. The regulators programmed for scarcity failed. There was no routine, even though we made love several times a day.