Evgene Solovyov The Southwest

Tрe Southwest: red fairy tale castles dot the landscape here. Grand Canyon’s glorious size, the play of light and shadows through the day, the Colorado River, the relentless knife, still cutting up the mountains, like tissue paper, into new exotic shapes. Zion is all grandeur, the sheer, polished shock of the immortal cliffs. Bryce is a trickster, with its playful maze of ancient avenues, mansions and cathedrals, an ancient civilization reduced to ruins and to dust. In Canyon de Chelly, mists and spirits hang in the heavy air, sweet flute melodies and coyotes’ laughter break the silence. In Antelope Canyon, I walk into the Venus Flytrap, willingly relinquishing my freedom to this beautiful seductress, who smothers me, her victim, entranced, immediately in love, between her lovely thighs, squeezes me dry, and spits me back, mesmerized, heartbroken, into the endless Arizona sunshine, already awaiting her fresh lover, new sacrificial lamb to be admitted to her secret chamber, enslaved into the service of the goddess, the beating, cruel heart of all these eternal rocks.