Companions

Incompatible opposites are a noisy affair. There is the blow of the horn that announced the start of it, the music emanating from the musicians’ gallery above the door opposite the dais, the singing of the latest love songs or political satires by minstrels, the performances of actors, tumblers or acrobats, jugglers, animal trainers, conjurors, comedians, and mummers or mimes. A spectacular performance! A divine epiphany, a wretched magic show! And the crowd! Everyone is there: the thieves, the lords, the knights, the maids and princesses, the factory owners, the steel workers, horses, frogs, some crawlies, the beaten, the praised, the loved, the uncounted, the velvety, the briefed, the analysts, the speculators, the calculators, a daisy and all the other jokers. Mumbling maimed words like ohh and ahh expelled from open throats, understanding each other perfectly and not at all. And of course the dancing! Swinging, sweating, stepping up, stepping down, a storm whipped forest of legs, swaying in the rhythm dictated by the horns and fiddles. On and on, back and forth, swirling, whirling, splashing, waiting for the coup de grace, with no end. And in the mornings, after all the exhaustion, at daybreak with the music dying down, everyone looking around becoming aware that one thing became clear in the course of this evening that incompatible opposites always are and come as companions.