My visual study of Camille's body in pain continued slowly. My French heroine was valiantly defying the odds of her resistance. She probably felt I was taking too long in whatever I was doing. She couldn't see me so she didn't know what I was doing but I'm sure she could sense my close presence, my going around and up and down her body. She probably could hear my heavy breathing, she could hear my foot steps and the beating of my heart. She could probably hear her name on every one of those anxious heartbeats.

I was sinking into a hole of no return, a black hole that was transporting me to an alter universe where everything was perfect, where there was perfect love and where there was a pedestal in the form of a cross where Camille stood frozen in time, her arms stretched out like a forgiven goddess.

As I went down on my knees to get a low angle shot of my suffering Camille, I felt like a worshiper with a bad knee. Because I always had a bad knee, which caused me to faint on Wednesdays during mass. When I was 12 I thought I was having a religious experience, because it always happened during communion, at the exact moment that priest was consecrating the host. I would see circles, the sound would go its way and a black mantel would cover my eyes and I was gone.

I later joined the dots... fasting plus bad knees sent my blood levels down to the basement. But the religious experience was there, around me. And this particular experience was bizarre, to say the least. It involved lions and crosses and a lot of extreme suffering, where I was one of the sufferers.

I looked up at Camille, always through the lens, as she suffered her agonizing ordeal. True to her plight, she let out a moan as she felt the ultimate moment approaching. The suffering had a reason, it was an end result, not void of significance. She had to understand that to play her part well. It was not part of this session, but part of the workshops. I had ingrained in my students the importance of subtext as the tool to understand and portray any situation. She had to dig into her experience to find that moment in her life where she was helpless and in pain and more importantly, unjustly so.

Perhaps because of my early school experience under the tutelage of nuns and jesuit priests, my martyrs suffered unjustly, valiantly, extremely and for a principle. The principle, the morality, the justice of their character had to be there, always.

After kneeling in front of Camille, I rose up again, still exploring her body, almost inspecting it, not looking for defects, but confirmation of her perfection. My attitude, rather than that of a torturer was that of a worshiper. My mind locked in the moment, unable to accept it or deny it. Just absorving it, not yet digesting it.

The reality was that I was in front of The One to take the place that was reserved for years for her. She didn't know it yet, but I was going to tell her soon. I wanted to kiss her.