Woman and Machine

WOMAN & MACHINE At a small hotel in Vitoria-Gasteiz working at a table adjacent to a balcony bounded and protected by an intricate wrought-iron barrier rail, I was watching pedestrians two stories below, intrigued by the variety of the substantially handsome, industrious people of that beautiful place The deepening joy of my dreamy diversion was unexpectedly jarred by the sudden distraction of a beautiful woman of indeterminate age in a red winter jacket and high boots and heels, a cascade of dark hair with a long silver streak that glinted in the sun as she strode to the curb and a large motorcycle that was masculine and black as a heavyweight champion waiting for the bell in a spot-lighted ring She spent a full thirty seconds arranging her hair under a bullet-shaped helmet that transformed her image from an ancient Greek goddess, somehow magically liberated from a red and black vase in an Athenian museum, to a contemporary form of something dangerously mobile on the roadways of Spain She should have been arrested after mounting her bike, so casually arousing was the blending of colors, the combined muscularity of woman and machine, merging into traffic among Mercedes and Audis, Kawasakis and Harleys but in the midst of it all unmistakably distinct like a world-famous swimmer, or a gold-medal sprinter, or a principal dancer in a supermarket line among ordinary people on an ordinary day! Emanuel Carter