Inspired by centuries of true stories about the dance between men and women in their journey to understand each other and themselves.


He is leaving home as everyone must eventually do to follow a distant call that he can not quite understand. The general direction is hazy and the sound is at first, subdued and erratic. It could be nothing more than the wind and waves that he hears but he is drawn away nonetheless and follows the sound relentlessly. It mesmerizes him and although it will be some time before he determines where it is coming from, he is blind to any danger and can not be swayed into remaining behind.

She is like the legendary mermaids in her ability to lure the unsuspecting man to her horizons, and remains as impartial as one when she watches him crash his ship haplessly against the smooth and welcoming curves of her shoreline. The traveler, lulled into a daze by her hypnotic voice and promising smile gladly gives up the flagging security of his now sinking vessel to dive into her warm, flowing waters. Unrepentantly she continues to call his name knowing full well that the water is too deep and the current too strong for any man to navigate successfully. He can only focus on the perfectly curved silhouette encouraging him from the shoreline, the sun permanently burning her youthful image into his eyes. Her dark hair falls almost casually around her smooth shoulders, seamlessly guiding his gaze to her chest. Her perfectly shaped breasts and hips are covered only by a barely transparent white cloth that clings to her sweat dampened skin and trails in the tropical breeze which it seems, is somehow under her spell as well. Her brown skin shimmers under the envious gaze of the sun, every inch of her seems to scream for him to keep coming even though the scheming waters would never willingly release him, for they are too are hungry.

"It’s a cruel fate that awaits him" she thinks as she patiently sets herself to watch his head slip under the water for the last time. Just like all the others before him. Torn between the primitive and basic instinct to climb upon her shores and the equally basic instinct to survive, the young and careless man realizes that he cannot have both life and love at this moment. He must choose the path of life or die trying for something else. And so he relinquishes and allows himself to be taken up by the rip tide. He doesn’t give up but simply understands and accepts that his power is not matched against that of the sea and so he must struggle to not struggle. That is the test, the challenge, the last hurdle in his voyage, because the hardest thing he will ever do is learn to be like the water itself; flowing, uninhibited and choosing the path of least resistance. In doing so he is pulled out to sea and can only watch as the very reason he departed the safe shores of home becomes a smaller and smaller object on the horizon.

She.

She watches too, as another young man is taken adrift by the one thing that seems beyond her control. The unforgiving ocean that is at once her sole confidant, the very medium that makes it possible for those young men to approach her, yet is also her devout enemy, a force beyond her reproach because of its uncompromising ability to do only that which it was created to do. To accept is as much a challenge for her as it is for him. The only hope, the only saving grace is the fact that this one didn’t disappear beneath the waves in his struggle to know her, but instead was pulled out to sea.

The false friendship of the water stings his eyes and mocks his parched throat. But as he drifts, the peaceful hush, the depth, the ferocity and the intense beauty of his captor remind him more and more of the woman whom he saw but never knew. He closes his eyes and allows his thoughts to focus on his surroundings, on his breathing and eventually on her. He pictures everything that he wants and he pictures nothing at all. He pictures her grace, her pure eroticism, her godliness and natural beauty, without judgment, without exception, without expectation, without ego, without standards and without hope. He allows her to flow through him as she truly is, for who she truly is and in doing so he unwittingly opens the door to his next path.

His feet brush up against the soft sand of the sea bed and he lets out a small laugh of amazement at how he can breath underwater, for surely he has drowned by now and his spirit released into the abyss that pledged to be his escape. But the sea bottom has too much sunlight and his face is being splashed by the waves, like a mother lovingly cleansing her child’s face. Sputtering, he opens his eyes, blinking at the blinding white sand and lifts his head to see why he is being forced from his promised home. He struggles to find his footing beneath the breaking sand and waves, but this time the ocean helps him ashore, lifting him easily to the nearby beach. He climbs out of the water shaking off the flash of betrayal he feels toward the sea for letting him go and for a very brief moment in time, he understands its nature and its purpose.

And she is there.

She is there, smiling that hidden smile, those eyes sparkling like jewels, those soft hands open and welcoming. He sees her and stops as he realizes she is not the woman who lured him to the shoreline. He does not hear the dizzying song that first enticed him from a distant land, nor does he see the shimmering silhouette that plied him into those dangerous waters. He sees instead the true beauty of her with all her flaws, as she is, for who she is and for who she will be. He sees the girl that could only come to him when he finally let go and allowed the shimmering mirage to fall away and the naked natural beauty of who she is to step out from behind her magic curtain. And she is.

She is;

everything a man could ever ask for.


- posted by riz @ 3:50 AM