I See a Woman Making Up

    Luis Benitez          

I see a woman, any woman, making up and change.
First she is thinking of something else (because when
a woman begins to make up she hasn't yet separated this act
from the rest of the day).
But when arranging the various objects that the
ceremony
preciously determines, in the exact place around
her hands

the woman knows that something has entered this
world again.
However, she avoids naming that to come.
Powders, creams, paints for the delicate architecture,
pencils that will write other words than these,
words that will intend saying that whom she hides.
The other one as she sees herself must be designed by
this one showing
in the mirror to see her.
She looks shy before her elder sister,
insisting
"take me out of nothing, invoke me, let me be again
among beings, hours and things,
let me be again among men,
above all let me be again among men."
And the little one surrenders to the call of the big one and
puts her out and designs her in the mirror.
On the other side she remains put in the drawing.
Powders, creams, paints, pencils, the instrument is the
same
in all similar ceremonies.
Who manufactures these things knows what she is doing.
I see a woman making up and she fascinates me.
On her part and as usual the woman is only fascinated by
herself.
Nothing or nobody exists even when she approaches the mirror
or when she stands facing the mirror or when she withdraws.
Rare species, so much sung and deaf.
She sails along life tied to her power and what is placed in her ears
and before her eyes, what is concentrated in her mouth
saves her from falling.
It will be because of it that in front of one we are always alone.
Enigmas of what cannot fall.
Now she draws a line, has doubted not for not knowing but
because
knowing the meaning of the ceremony, she enjoys the preliminary.
Now she draws a line and divides the day in two.
It has been done, the rest is a development, a dark blue line,
hardly a stroke
on the left eye, completely transformed.
It is no longer a human eye, it is not the eye that came with her
from the womb

that bore a woman, but an eye of her own,
definitely hers.
The eye regards the rest in the mirror and, satisfied,
winks to encourage the woman.
The other one looks at her from that eye where she now appears and
watchful
impels her to continue.
However the woman pauses half made-up,
drinks
a cup of tea -  there is a pleasure in going about the world
scarcely made-up.
Simultaneously it's like demonstrating a minute power
to the other one,
a slight strength that may delay but will not avoid her.
What both know and thank for.
But finally also the right eye changes and the other woman
perfectly sees.
In the mirror now she is the one who sees,
and the first woman is leaving slowly stroke by stroke.
There are some hazel creams with which women
change their skin
they don't darken theirs but withdraw the other skin from
her cheeks and allow it to show.
I completely ignore the name of this ointment as I ignore the names
of other elements of the ceremony because they and their names
belong to another world.
The one that lives together with man's on this earth
and in history.
Precise names, things, terms that we cannot
understand
which come from another language, are pronounced in another language
much more suggestive than ours,
a language that is to be used in a low voice, almost
in a whisper.
Because it does not belong to the universe of great expansions
but to
that of the confidential, the intimate, the obscure.
In this language women speak among them and talk
to the other one before the mirror.
Where a gesture means something different, where no word
corresponds with ours, there in that language a woman makes up
and we believe she embellishes.
Before the mirror everything has been consummated and the other one
is already in this world,
the previous woman has gone and this is the one who sees herself entire.
Alternatively she moves a muscle, smiles, raises or bends her head
as an actor calculating his strength and previously rehearsing movements.
Before the mirror this other woman measures sinuosities, gestures, pauses.
Alone, previous, unique, these gesticulations are like the archetypes
which live at ease in the world of ideas but are then converted into
a number.
Repetitions of every movement will be launched
with extreme precision over the world of things.
They will incorporate to this without losing their foreign condition.
The woman is not only herself but also her gestures besides her body -
she haunts the body's surroundings, the room, the entire place
wherever she is.
Like this woman the other one who still looks at herself
in the mirror a little longer,
mask of mask, fiction believed to be complete.