What I think about the one who flies …
I like for you to be still; as though you were absent.” (Pablo Neruda, “Sonnet 15,” Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
Not an angel since angels are asexual, genderless, and this body displays its femaleness fully, openly, unabashedly. Although, I have to admit, I was drawn to the wings and halo-like hair before I noticed her breasts and belly, and that space between ribcage and pelvis so reminiscent of a valley or a cradle, a holding space, beautifully punctuated by the navel. No, not an angel, I thought, but a powerful fertility symbol, an earth goddess, despite her name, “La que vuela”/“The one who flies.” Or maybe she is part angel and part woman, an earth angel, a fantastical creature, the ethereal and the earthy combined in one striking image, striking because you can really feel her strength, the power stored in her young and supple body. And although she is not flying here — the weight of her limbs anchors her to the ground — you believe she is capable of soaring on those delicate palm wings and she simply chooses not to, preferring to remain still because there’s power in stillness, there must be, let’s face it, when so many women are willing to offer themselves naked to the camera like she is — I mean the real women, not the mythical goddesses, the symbols — to expose themselves to its gaze, to submit to it: there must be power in submission. But then I ask myself if I’m not confusing stillness with something else, ascribing to this goddess, this earth angel, a power she doesn’t have, because you only have to look closely at her face to see that she’s not really there, not really present (her vacant eyes … ) So how can she hold any power if she — the thinking, feeling, acting, speaking being — is no longer there, if she, the one who flies, is absent?
