I thrive on the blissful moment when I've stepped out past the limits.
There are times when I'm cycling -- when I've been cycling for a few hours already -- there are times when I run out of energy. I hit a limit and I have to stop. I have to stop. I know I have to stop. There are hills ahead. I have to stop and yet I keep going.
I go up the hill even though I can't possibly do that.
And as I go up the hill, I know I can't possibly go up another one.
Somehow I do it. Arduous miles vanish under me.
The man I was last night, the man I was when I woke up this morning, that man couldn't possibly achieve this peak. I have ceased to be him. I have surpassed myself. I have gone out past the limits that define me. Lacking definition, I become infinite; I become the possible human.
I am inhabited by a radiance.
I find a Source, and it is not mine.
A Power.
From elsewhere.
A movement in the god.
A breath.
A gift.
A wind.
My eyesight fails, and I pull off the road and stop the bike as the world blacks out to endless rapture, overwhelming joy, and all I see is
one --
-- single --
-- blue --
-- butterfly.
This is what happens when I go past my limits.
I want to offer my lover that kind of bliss.
Tlazolteotl, eater of filth. Tlazolteotl, goddess of lust, goddess of shame. When her worshippers, her witches, invoke her, when they invoke her with fire and blood and degradation, she comes to them in the form of a blue butterfly.
Tlazolteotl, devourer of sins. Goddess of witches and witchcraft, she is the crescent moon. She flies naked across the sky, riding on a broomstick. She holds a red snake in one hand, and in the other she holds a coil of blood-smeared rope.
The fallen come to her, the sinful and the monstrous come to her. She will forgive them. She will forgive them for everything.
In the form of a blue butterfly, she visits her chosen few. Those who follow the flight of the blue butterfly will have to crawl through shit. They are luminaries of affliction. They will take all the world's filth in their hands, and transform it into something beautiful. They will breathe in all the suffering of the world, and they will exhale it as compassion.
My lover and I go walking. I turn her around to face me. She walks backwards, and I direct her by a fist gripping her jacket. She keeps turning her head to see where she's going, so I command her to keep her eyes on my face. I give her a little shove, and she stumbles, but I will not let her fall.
Step by step, wavering between trust and fear, she walks gorgeously backwards; if she falls, I will catch her, and in my arms she will be light as a bag of butterflies.
There is something familiar about her journey, blinded and backwards; it reminds me of something, but I can't think of what. Then it comes to me. I ask her if she knows about the angel of history.
She doesn't, so I begin to tell her. "Walter Benjamin wrote, 'The angel of history,'"
(I give her another shove)
"'the angel of history must look this way: it has turned to face the past.'"
(I keep driving her backwards)
"'Where we see a chain of events, it sees only a single catastrophe incessantly piling ruin upon ruin and hurling them at its feet.'"
(a push and a stumble)
"'It would probably like to stay, waken the dead, and correct the devastation; but a storm is blowing hard from Paradise, and -- caught in its wings -- it's so strong the angel can no longer close them. While the debris piles ever higher before its eyes, the storm drives it without pause into the future to which its back is turned.'"
I have grown solemn, thinking of humanity's penchant for inhumanity; the catastrophes piling up, the angel powerless to stop it. It is twilight in the dirty city, and a few pedestrians scowl from across the walk. There is a beautiful woman, an opened woman, at the end of my fist and I am thrusting her into the future, her eyes never wavering from my face. She says,
"Sir, may I please have permission to come?"
Later I will bind her. Later I will fuck the sky into her body. Later I will fuck the blue butterfly into her spirit.
I will hurt her. The evening will unfurl as a series of brutal beauties: candles, claws, clamps, and shibari, the loving sigh of a bullwhip, a boot in the face, fire, electricity, and shiny, shiny knives. I'm going to make her life a blend of dream and heaven and sweat, for a few hours, and she'll never, ever forget it. I'm going to devastate her with pain and pleasure.
I'm going to take her down and expose her. I'm going to open her. I'm going to leave her aching, delirious, humbled.
I will push her to her limits and beyond. Her safeword hangs in the air between us, so I can choose to ignore her when she says "no" or "stop" or "please." If she begs me to stop after I've whipped her ten times, I might put down the whip, curl her safe in my cradling arms, and in a firm voice I might say, "I'm going to give you ten more." Whether she says "Yes Sir" or "Please no Sir" makes no difference; I'm going to give her ten more.
Afterwards, when I rub her down with rabbit fur and spray her with rosewater and ylang ylang, when I strap on a Camelbak in order to nurse her from my body, she will not move. She won't be sleeping, she won't be dreaming, she won't be falling; she'll be in flight, she'll be simple as haiku (the rain in the trees), she'll be nameless and faceless, intimate with the birth of stars.
I want to offer my lover that kind of bliss: this is the kiss of the blue butterfly.
Perhaps we've found a way to harness the intensity of the world's grief, the disasters and suffering piled up in front of history's angel. Perhaps we are able to focus the accrued misery of the world into something vulnerable and intense and intimate, a scene that ends with tears -- with both of us in tears.
I will surge my violence through her and be pure.
I am an agent of the blue butterfly. We are faithful servants of Tlazolteotl.
Together we will absolve the world.
Together we will wash all the blood off God's hands.
The opened woman is a sky scorched by the flight of a blue butterfly.
Have you seen it?
If you've been brushed by the tortured blue of its wings, then you might already be one of the burning, one of the broken, the wild witches dancing for Tlazolteotl.
They are scarlet, they are surrendered, the luminous ones: angels whose wounds heal the world.
I lean over and whisper in her ear, "Little butterfly...spread your wings."
She obeys, widening her legs to expose her tender pussyflesh. I scrape a set of copper claws between her thighs.
Tonight I want to make an angel bleed.
