ONE THOUSAND NIGHTS WITH MISS BEAUTIFUL. CHAPTER 4: IF THE STONES COULD TALK
Written by: Marco A Romero
If beauty and dedication speak for themselves, the River Walk itself speaks for itself.
If the voices of disenchantment on the River Walk had been heard, no buildings would exist today, and thousands of passersby wouldn't have walked its paths each year, for it stands as a testament to the tenacity and vision of its former builders.
The River Walk, with its stones, its canals, its forms, and its structures, was a testament to the existence of men with tenacity and vision, who built inch by inch, stone by stone, year after year, and whose buildings we walk past today as a testament to their effort.
Every work speaks for itself, more through the stone than through disenchantment; by the tangible, than by the intangible, the work defines more by its existence than by the pretended essences of a non-existent character put by others in definitions far from its structure: the River runs, and it cannot be said that it is because of its drought and lack of water, in a premeditated and stipulated work of engineers and visionaries who solved the problems of too much or too little water in its time with its droughts and floods, because the two occurred as all examples of a nature that sometimes gives little or sometimes gives a lot, or sometimes nothing, and the decisions of that nature were visible in the Paseo del Rio, because it solved the enormous problems of an incipient city in growth, in abundance as in drought.
The works are testimonies made by hands, in stones and canals, not words that produce nothing but restlessness and oblivion.
Thus, there was the possibility of leaving the Wild River as it was, unchanged, and letting the waters flow naturally, forming as nature had intended, a serpent shaped like a "U" that would pass through various streets of the former city in 1932, and then discharge its waters south, abandoning the metropolis; except it wasn't the river that got in the way of the city, but the city that got in the way of the river and we populated it and blocked it and gave it instructions to run in direct channels, and like all good thinkers and architects of our own destiny, we put dikes to hold back the waters and kept the course of the "U" for recreation and beauty, with buildings and shopping centers, while the other flow of the river would no longer turn in a "U" but would run straight, in a lying "I" and through a horizontal channel the north would join with the south of the river, so we wouldn't interfere with its currents, and we would also build huge dikes and channels that would run hidden and underground in heavy cement slabs passing streets and canals, which would try to avoid the painful floods of 1890 and 1921, to mention a few, in such a way that those heavy cement slabs would pass streets and canals, while above them structures and urbanizations were built: buildings above, cement slabs below.
A work of engineering, of astute and daring people who dared to modify the inertia of a serpentine path to transform it into a beautiful paradise, just like the lives that pass through it today; of astute people who resolved problems and saw when natural causes were ruining the human environment and decided to provide solutions. Today, it's a pleasure to see it in its beauty and exposition, and where the wild river of yesteryear has been transformed into a majestic work, worthy of admiration for thousands and thousands of passersby who tread its sidewalks almost 100 years later, a demonstration of what human power and will can do when resolving the natural intrigues of its time.
And since everything comes together in paradise, we must add the human element that participates not only in the physical beauty of the environment, but in the beauty that human beings create when they freely walk through those passages, and where love opens up paths, and builds them like any good engineer or architect of life, because down there, almost a hundred years later, a human being values the construction of a bridge, because there would be no history without frameworks, roofs and supports, and he was grateful for the rain and the storms and the lightning when conjuring a spell of two souls, in a natural creation where there were no bulldozers, nor human personnel excavating in a river to forge a destiny, but a spontaneous creation, as life, that makes its way, and if those lovebirds had life or a future, the answer was there, because if anything could be said, it is that nature weaves stories every day, at all hours, in any place, and only lovers are capable of deciphering the enigmas of destiny, like any couple in encounter, and the coin was tossed in the air, as in the game of love, waiting to fall to the ground in Heads or Tails; heads for presence, or Tails for absence, to illuminate a story that was flying through the air, in the rapids and intricate paths of the Paseo del Rio.
"Why are you kissing me?" she asked, dismayed, staring into my eyes, without leaving my presence, while her hands rested on my biceps, and my hands touched her hips, and she questioned with regret, "Do you have problems with acceptance or belonging?"
"What?" I exclaimed, half perplexed and half-hearted, at the moment of a kiss that didn't let me enjoy it, and I argued and harangued: "Philosophy and Psychology with the kiss, in theory applied to reality?"... and I insisted like a soldier that somebody else wanted to take his life, if kisses meant losing lives, instead of winning them.
I apologize,” I harangued, offering a philosophical justification, “but interrupting kisses is like ice cream falling to the floor and its flavor is not enjoyed because of the sudden break in the moment,” to which she smiled at the naiveté of the explanation, and I explained in detail that when the ice cream fell to the floor, the lips were just beginning to appreciate the flavor of the chocolate, and therefore the interruption should be considered a “penalty” and as in soccer games, it is two free throws onto the field, which, in our case, would imply two free kisses in my full interpretation of the rules of the game, made by me, because she plays on my court, that is, on my bridge because I discovered it first, and Christopher Columbus arrived here first, because this is about the Discovery of America, literally speaking, on the Crocket Street Bridge, and she was the American who got on my boat, because I arrived first to the bridge and discovered it first, to begin with!
And what did the gentleman say?! "Are we here with VanGogh taking naturist photographs, teaching history classes, and playing soccer in a Parisian field on the River Walk?” she replied confidently, while explaining the psychology of kissing on trilateral issues like any good woman who not only multitasks, but also presents multiple arguments in courtrooms and courtrooms... Are kisses acceptance or belonging?" she asked again.
And a bolt of lightning struck the horizon again, and she succumbed once more in my arms. Hugging me tightly around the neck, I took the opportunity to hug her and touch her back. While she leaned against my chest and remained silent, she lifted her face, looked into my eyes, and offered another soft kiss, closing her eyes. After which she leaned against my chest and remained silent, knowing she would ask me why I kissed her again, in a feminine subtlety, which I supported by enjoying the moment to the fullest with her presence.
Is a kiss a belonging or an acceptance? I inquired again after her juicy lips brushed mine to verify the realities of an event in response to her question, and the rain intensified and bathed the trees and sidewalks in an unparalleled spectacle, or perhaps it was she who imprinted magic on the moment with her presence, because a woman admired for her beauty generates a natural attraction, and is like a gravitational magnet that emerges just as the Sun revolves around the Earth, and although there is a distance between them, the attraction is perceived in the environment, playful, invisible, inexplicable, rotating, but also attractive and existing, and then the hidden laws of the Universe are transmitted in her genes, in the way life unfolds in the Universe, and surreptitiously exposes the laws of attraction to maintain a balance in love for a creation, and manifested just as a mother with her children in her genes.
If the attraction of the Sun on Earth did not generate movement, life on Earth would not exist, and then there were the hidden answers of the universe in the love in Humans beings, who would have to perform their movements so that the perfect harmony of both could flow in an environment, and there could be life and existence on Earth.
Was the kiss the Big Bang of creation? I replied, to which she answered, "Don't go that far, sir." Then again, I replied that the crush and explosion of the Big Bang gave life on Earth, and exploded into happiness, creating souls and rocks and rocks exploding and flying in the Universe. To which she replied if they were images of repressed desires, and I explained that we weren't in transactional therapy but in a chance encounter, talking about geophysics in the Universe.
She laughed, remained silent, didn't want to answer, and after a while, thoughtful, she expressed it, still leaning on my chest, as if whispering when you no longer want to fight to win, but rather concede to listen: "There are times," she indicated, "when we don't need to talk, to speak."
And she planted another kiss that disarmed me like lightning, and there was a silence, a tremendous silence. She caressed my face with her hands, her juicy lips, Mexican lemonade on a sunny day, leaving the soul satisfied by the pleasant contact of the liquid and the delicacy of her skin that transported me to the Moon, so to speak.
Thus, nature had already printed her painting, and in silence, we enjoyed the presence, when presence symbolizes only being, simply being and enjoying the person in silence, while my hands brushed her curved hips, and she settled down to stay on my chest, in a complement, in a harmony, just like the Universe, in silence, under the bridge in the rain.
Outside, the leaves of the trees continued moving happily as they received the rain that came pouring down from the sky. The rain moved in time with the crazy wind that made waves of water, and like a baseball at first base, threw the streams of water onto passersby's faces to second base, and the drops of water drilled hard into the sidewalks of the River in a unique spectacle of nature, where two human beings, there, below the bridge, participated in silence of intimate caresses and heavenly encounters, while nature threw all its beauty, putting all its elements to work to seal an encounter intoning in unison Beethoven's 5th Symphony in an unparalleled concert, between kisses and caresses, and lightning and thunder, and sounds of wind, questioning destiny, if a love story would be heard there.