"That's the situation that we face again as society, Sylvia, with the Ice Age on the horizon," I said quietly.

      "The situation is unavoidable if we don't act," I wanted to say. "The Ice Age is coming. It could start next year or a hundred years from now. Some people suggest that it has started already since some glaciers are already getting larger again. What would empower us therefore to act like human beings for once, and to save our civilization and our existence? We have known for decades that we face another Ice Age, and that our food supply will thereby dwindle to small amounts, if we don't act like human beings in defense of one another. Ironically, nothing has animated us so far to take the required steps to assure our continued existence on this dynamically changing planet of ours. Nothing has motivated us. Nothing has moved us. We literally sit back and wait and hope that we can magically get by and live without food. So tell me, Sylvia," I wanted to say, "what is the missing force that would get us off our butt and inspire us to act as human beings? The lives of nine-tenth of humanity are at stake. In addition, we have to act fast, because time is running out." I didn't say any this. I said nothing at all.

      Sylvia just shook her head, looking at the paintings. She knew me too well not to realize that my silence was agonizing for me, and what it was all leading up to. But what could she or I say?



      We came to the Black Room next. The Black Room had black painted doors. Inside, everything was black, except for Goya's art. The walls and the ceiling were painted deep velvet black. Even the carpet was black, and the furniture. The only light in the room was the light reflected from the artwork. Three of Goya's series were displayed in this room, interspersed with one-another. Those were the "Black Paintings" of civil war. One was of two men fighting each other with clubs, standing knee-deep in mud, unable to escape from each other, fated to suffer each other's blows for eternity. The other series of paintings was focused on bullfights.

      The third series in the Black Room was the small series of etchings that the guide had referred to earlier, which Goya might have called The Death of Truth and its Resurrection. There were three pieces as the guide had mentioned. The title of the first is, The truth is dead. The truth is represented in the etching by a full-breasted young woman laying dead on the ground. Goya presents us her funeral scene presided over by a cleric, with justice in the background biding her eyes. Such was the 'death of Spain,' after years of war, and civil war, betrayal, and the restoration of the Inquisition. By this 'death' Spain ended up more backward than ever, just as we are in the modern age of 'Cultural Freedom' meaning freedom from culture.

      The second etching is called, Will She Rise Again? Even dead on the ground the truth is still sufficiently bright to pierce the darkness inhabited by the creatures of the night. And she does rise again. In the third etching, This is the truth, Goya shows the truth restored, robust, erect, a proudly full-breasted woman in a scene that is flooded in the brilliance from a great sun, evident by its light. Goya shows her addressing an old bearded farmer. He stands with the promise for the renewed 'fertility' in the humanist world of mankind. Also, as the guide had suggested, the facial expression of the woman representing the truth appeared similar to that of the Maja in Maja and Celestina.

      "Perhaps Goya is suggesting that the truth cannot be fully hid by the circumstances we subject ourselves to," I suggested.



      The three little etchings, of the Death and the Rise of the Truth, series, filled the center space of one of the walls in the Black Room. The center of the opposing wall was devoted to one of the truly "Black Paintings," the terrifying painting of Saturn Devouring one of His Sons. Fearing the prophesy that a son would overthrow him, Saturn, the god of Roman mythology, is said to have devoured them all, one by one, save Jupiter, whose mother hid him, and saved him from the 'imperial' depopulation madness.

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Stories about  Sex from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche