A familiar scene from the life of Vespa Rodrigues, an anachronistic ‘lovable rogue’ from a bygone era.
TITLE CARD: I bet you say that to all the girls
Vespa and Maya on the beachfront at Miramar. They stay off the blazing sand and within the shade of the Casuarina tree line. She stoops to pick something up. Holds out a heart-shaped stone for him to see.
V: Oh yes. There it is…
M: What is?
V: The sign. The consecration.
M: It’s an almost perfect cardioid.
V: I bet you’ve got a collection.
M: Of stone hearts?
V: Of stones turned into hearts.
M: It’s incredible how this…. orphaned object conspired with gravity, wind, water and time to come to this
V: It’s not that crazy at all. When I’m with you I see heart shapes everywhere.
M: There’s a mathematical explanation for that.
V: Don’t you use your devil science to belittle my passion!
M: [drawing a circle in the sand] It’s a simple pattern inscribed by a fixed point on a circle which rolls around the perimeter of another… I guess that is a form of attraction.
V: [holding up his phone] My friend the fact checker would disagree
M: About the path of circles?
V: Seems to me that there’s a lot more going on.
M; Really?
V: It would have to be to explain the impossible co-incidence. It would have to explain how we found each other.
M: OK. What’s your theory?
V: First you have to leave aside all this business of Euclidean planes and the rest holding you bound to your mundane reality.
M: [really?] Done
V: [nudging her outwards with a dance flourish] Two projectiles, split from a source, following a predestined path. Like fountains.
M: Parabolas? You mean like mortar shells?.
V: [conceding] SHOT out of each other’s orbits. Equidistant from but tethered to the line [gesturing the space between them] of a shared fantasy. At first the freedom is thrilling. And then, with gravity acting upon them, they begin to decelerate uniformly.
M: Unscientific
V: They slow to a stop, farthest away from each other and suddenly weightless. Here they twist around and lock eyes in complete honesty, zero gravity, without the baggage of the past or the expectations of any future heaving into them. [she smiles. he gestures her to approach] Then, the collapse. And they reach out for each other, reuniting in the idea, falling in a spiral, a sheltered cusp, a whorl of life-giving motion.
THEY REUNITE IN AN EMBRACE. TOP SHOT REVEALS THEIR SCATTERED FOOTPRINTS IN THE SAND FORMING A CARDIOID HEART
M: I think I was happier when I was weightless
[….VESPA RODRIGUES is coming to fill your days with metaphysical, metronomic, hyper-romance! Follow his adventures online and engage in the battle for his soul as you help him see past the patterns of his codependent narcissism…]
