"I realized there are many techniques that we cannot do when we get old. But I also found that there are techniques that we can do only when we are aged." Hirokazu Kanazawa

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 "Everything in life goes back to the basics." Kron Gracie

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"I only want to live for ecstasy. The small dose, the moderate love, the half-lights leave me cold. I love the extraordinary, letters that make the postman's back stiff... sexuality that makes the thermometers burst." Anaïs Nin

Iconic Constellations

Nana searches for iconographic constellations in which a man can remain oriented toward her for an extended period without turning mechanical through exhaustion. What interests her is endurance of attention, not repetition of gesture.

Nana and Cornelius meet for the first time outside their academic routine. They sit in a café that is oppressively loud and dreary, but the setting is irrelevant. What matters is the intensity between them. Cornelius leans forward, instinctively seeking a closeness that would normally seal a moment. Nana turns her head slightly. The gesture fails to land as intended; it brushes the edge of what might have been connection. Cornelius registers disappointment.

A great deal has already taken place in the invisible space Nana and Cornelius opened in less than twenty-four hours. The previous day marked their first intimate exchange by email. Cornelius responded to Nana’s exploration of unfamiliar territory as if it were excessive, overwhelming. Nana felt the same. They share the experience that direct enactment threatens to collapse what language has built. For both of them, imagination sustains intensity longer than action ever could. They believe—perhaps for the first time—that they have encountered someone capable of remaining on the high wire of anticipation far longer than any predecessor.

Nana is often accused of drawing men in simply because they use words unfamiliar to her. In those moments, she attempts to infer meaning from context. The sounds resonate, exerting a pull rooted in novelty and mystery. What attracts her is not certainty, but discovery.

At home, Nana consults old dictionaries with devotion. The texture of aging paper and the precision of new vocabulary satisfy her need for stimulation. Cornelius appears to fulfill conditions as if she had designed them herself. She would never admit this to him, but occasionally a particular sound in his speech produces a sensation as if her mind itself were being carefully activated. Cornelius advances the exploration of her limits by means of language. His desire, paradoxically, works to quiet the turbulence within her rather than inflame it.

Let us postpone the figure of the Language Master. He will appear later, elsewhere. For now, Cornelius senses—perhaps prematurely—that he possesses a means of binding Nana’s attention. He introduces it gradually. Nana experiences his voice as a source of pleasure, her devotion to the moment functioning like a receptive medium. Cornelius feels himself overflowing, though nothing outward has occurred. They are intensely engaged, and yet they are only speaking.

Cornelius refers to Hans Mayer, invoking the “evocation of a female outsider status” in the bourgeois approach to feudal power, suggesting that this movement generates an entire constellation of themes. Exclusion, Mayer notes, was practiced almost compulsively between Erasmus and Shakespeare. The stigmatization of women as “corruptors” circulates as a persistent literary cliché. Figures such as Salome retain their symbolic charge across centuries. This, Cornelius senses, is the correct register. This is how Nana must be addressed.

Nana concentrates on sustaining the tension. Cornelius stops advancing tentatively; he assumes control of the discourse. Nana’s face adopts an expression of attentive seriousness that conceals the intensity of her focus. Cornelius continues, his references spilling into the present. He quotes from Uwe Timm’s novel Red. Nana suspects that he invokes the title not accidentally, but in order to summon a particular image—an ideal combining innocence with autonomy. She responds with a smile that is unexpectedly gentle, allowing a minor gesture to take on symbolic weight. A fine chain at her neckline carries the gravity of a long narrative.

Variant

Nana repays the careful construction of the setting with a form of devotion. She offers a smile that is both tender and disarming, allowing Cornelius to rest momentarily in the image she presents. The effect is deliberate, restrained, and charged.

There remains a clear boundary—layers of convention, etiquette, and timing—between Cornelius’s curiosity and Nana’s full availability. In Chinese martial arts, one distinguishes between Wu Sao, the securing hand, and Man Sao, the searching hand. Cornelius has abandoned the securing hand. He leans forward, seeking immediacy. Nana registers this shift with mild regret; she prefers to prolong the initiation.

From the Comment Column

“A man who celebrates his excellence and omits no detail on the keyboard of distinction.”

These paragraphs deserve preservation, the reader writes—to be framed, illuminated, and revisited. Language reflecting language, mirrored in an endless hall of words, each iteration making another impossibility conceivable. New words, new impulses, new narratives, new heights. The most refined form of intellectual intoxication.

For some people, desire diminishes when provoked too directly. It grows instead through voice, education, and intelligence. Those who respond differently can become disruptive to individuals whose center of pleasure is activated by language. The difficulty lies in the inevitable transition: at some point, those who operate primarily through words are expected to translate imagination into reality. This moment can dismantle the delicate architecture they rely on.

Nana enjoys moving among people like a well-dressed Cinderella. She takes pleasure in environments others find tedious. Seduction—understood as fascination—is a driving force in her life. Even during stable relationships, she sustains an ongoing project of imagination. Mystery sustains her momentum. She responds to language, voice, and intellectual timbre. In public places, she experiences moments of heightened awareness because she has mastered manifestation. At times, she moves as if through veils, as though the world consisted only of flowing, transient forms.