The Form Of The Other

I feel the pain, that particular pain that makes me retreat into myself, that makes me try to hide within my own body. I feel it often. So often now that I don’t run anymore, yet I do not smile, not yet. I’m not quite ready.
I hear them laughing and I cannot stop my heart from beating a little louder. Thump, THUMP. It hurts. I hear them walking down the wooden stairs and my chest begins to pound, each footfall is another kick in the gut. They are coming. They are coming.

It all points back to the early years when it seemed that there was no danger, when safety fell from the sky like rain and it formed puddles around my soft hands, letting me know that there would never be any kind of danger.
In my youth I was cheerful, kind , and, above all, an obedient little girl. The very sweetest and kindest are most susceptible to conviction. That’s what I’ve come to learn. When they suggested that I take them into my heart I did just that, rather than pretending, like everybody else did, rather than playing along, leaving my insides untouched.
I did not know the limits as a child. I was too slow to catch on to the ways of the world. When they bade me to accept them I opened my arms and flung wide the doors to my little heart and cried:
"Come in, come in! I am ready!"

I have to stop. There’s only so much I can explore before the pain becomes too strong. I feel a vortex of energy coming now, I feel a vacuum growing within me. I feel the pull of a star-less space, a microscopic black hole in the very center of my core reactor.
There is a tug on my toes. My attention is going elsewhere, like waves on a shore that only recede, it’s going to a place where little spindles fly in circles and dive into my joints. They join together, tight as a brick in my jaw and then I cannot talk. I cannot laugh or smile. I am stuck. It’s hard to move, it’s even harder to breath.
I go back. I lose myself in thoughts that may make me forget what I am feeling.

That was how it all started. Very innocently, with the best of intentions. My crime, of course, was, is and ever shall be an indulgence in conviction. While immersed in a culture of images there can be no greater sin than sincerity.
They returned, stronger than I had ever known them and I opened the temple of my mammalian countenance and threw back my head to howl an invitation:
"Come in, come in! I am ready!"

My attention returns because they are coming. They are coming down the stairs. That’s what I tell myself. It is because of them that I feel these metal pincers squeezing at my damaged heart. Their voice, their laughter, their rules, their sucking in all the energy of the space, pulling me out and robbing me of my smiles and my air. Anxiety swirls around me like a conscious whirlwind, moving to the right, to the left, wherever I step like a fast-footed athlete. They are the reason, the source, the pain. That’s what I tell myself. That’s what I have to tell myself. Even if it doesn’t really help, even if the pain remains intact and I still can find no real sanctuary.

I asked them inside of me. There was never a more generous or hospitable offer to make, nor shall there ever be.
Now I hear from others that this is a very frightening and naughty thing to have done. I hear from human animals that this is a bad thing, what I did. But how could I have known?
There was no one to ask, no one to consult with, back when it was happening.
I am not ashamed to have looked into my own innermost quarters, into the depths of my being, into the secret crevices of my mind and discovered that there was darkness there, a true darkness that pulsed with forbidden life.
I am not ashamed to have discovered that I am but a mere mortal, an animal alike in my fears and desires to all other animals. I am not ashamed to have made a sacrifice of that animal on the altar that we call a lifetime.

I could now hurt and blame them and that would be my story, a story I would remember and tell myself, just like I tell myself all these other stories. The little explanations that last until the carousel breaks in a puff of smoke and all the plastic animals tumble out. It is so easy to place the cause outside of me. Just so easy.
Pain comes from the outside, from the Others.
Pain is caused by the Other.
The Other.

But there are only habits. A myriad of habits that multiply endlessly in all directions. The habits of politics and speech and body movement. The habits of the machine, transmitted and programmed since birth by parents and school and friends and church and society. The learned habits of an entire culture run amok through this body of flesh and bone and light.
Each bio-machine has a thousand habits. Each is convinced of their ultimate rightfulness.

Can I transcend these deep habits, so ingrained that I mistake them for the sky?
I say clearly and loudly:
“You may keep all of the rewards in store for the obedient animals, I will take all of the punishments reserved for the strays.”

Freedom is paid for with responsibility, accepting the consequence of my actions and inactions. I will try to be faithful to my purest impulses, to my open hearted wonderment and willingness. I will accept my worst nature, my cowardly yearnings, as they are mine too, and I will be the one to master them with open eyes and a gentle hand.

I hear them coming with the force of a train, my habits begin to creak. The pain begins. They bring their own habits, they exhibit them. Their hands move wildly. Their voices rattle the walls.
But it is the clash of my habits with theirs which hurts. It is the reaction of one bio-machine to another. The Other has a different set of habits. There is no fault. There is only learned mechanicality. The differences are what cause the pain. The clash between what I want and what they are. The clash between how I want things to be and what Is at the moment. It is the clash that causes the pain. Not the Other. The Other is just me in a different form.

My kingdom is in the invisible heavens and hells, embedded in every shadow and every reflection, in every grain of sand and every tear drop. I am all that have breathed and ever will breathe. May I live in small gestures that grow grander, may I flow through subtle shapes that refuse to take a final form, may I rest on gentle hues and whispered murmurs, may I flourish under this veil of mortality. May I then invite then into me with a true and open heart:
"Come in! Come in! I am ready!"

In The Bowels of the Gods

Keith blinked a few times before the glass came into focus under his nose. There was something golden and frothy bubbling in it like live amber. Beer? Hazily he tried to recall where he'd been, how he'd gotten here, and where "here" was.
After a moment he realized he was sitting on a high stool at one end of a long glossy bar. A handful of other humanoids were seated along the length of it, two of them, nursing drinks. The other three were clustered together near a machine that looked like an old fashioned cassette player, the sort he remembered seeing in a classroom in his youth, back in 1983.
That was his youth wasn't it? Presently it was difficult for him to identify who he was and sort through which memories probably belonged to this person.
He shook his head a little and focused again at the triad at the other end of the bar. It did look like an old fashioned cassette player, flat with broad white keys, but in the window where a cassette would have been there were touch screen controls, and instead of wearing headphones, all three were connected to the device with an output that jacked in behind an ear. They were all smiling dreamily, and occasionally one of them reached out and struck a series of keys which caused them all to shiver in apparent ecstasy and they would smile and nod to each other trough veiled eyelids. Then the next person would try their hand at manipulating the keys and the scenario would repeat.
This did not seem to Keith like a familiar activity. Instinctively he reached behind his ear and felt for the jack. Shock rippled through him and his jaw dropped a little when his fingertips encountered a small round opening there. Apparently, it should be familiar to him.
Vaguely he noted a curtained stage upon which a woman with black make up smudged all over her eyes was performing a rendition of Blue Velvet, singing in charmingly dusky tones while accompanying herself on a theremin. Her tangerine colored hair leapt up from her scalp ala bride of Frankenstein but curled so that it resembled a wave or a flame. A clingy white sequined evening gown, designed with gashes all down the torso through which her pale flesh peeped, was only slightly distinguishable in hue from her complexion. Individuals were scattered around a handful of tables spread through out the establishment. Most attended the tables closest to the stage, drinking or snoozing or examining liquid crystal tablets.
Suddenly, Keith was aware of the bar tender looming over him from the other side of the bar. The big bald man cleared his throat. Keith glanced sheepishly up at him.
"You asked for this." the bar tender said and pushed an LCD pad towards him, the muscles of his arms rippling under the tattoos. The words "Madam Blagva's Celestial Calculator" flashed over the screen accompanied by an entourage of sparkling shooting stars.
"Uh, thank you." Keith said and smiled. He couldn't believe that he had asked for this. He had no idea what it was or how it worked. He sat and gazed numbly at it. The bar tender was watching him. Keith squirmed.
"It's been a while since I've used one of these..." he ventured in an attempt at explanation. The bartender raised an eye brow.
"Just plug in your spider" he said.
Keith tried not to look too horrified or perplexed.
"I lost mine." he answered. Now the bartender raised both eyebrows to dubious heights.
"It's been a rough couple of years." Keith supplemented his original statement.
The bartender sighed and reached over and taped the pad with three fingers.
"Without direct interface you won't have any privacy, but it's your call."
A gritty electrified granny voice intoned mysteriously from the pad,
"Ask your question."
Keith stared at the pad. There were no alphanumeric keys. Timidly he cleared his throat and said,
"Uh…I've been going nowhere career wise and have felt stuck in a rut."
He paused and looked cautiously at the bar tender, hoping that he had done the right thing. He nearly sighed with relief when the gritty little voice encouraged him,
"Go on."
"Well, I discovered a book called 'Earth Sun Moon' put out by Wooden books and I drafted a 'celestescope' that charts the moon, sun, mercury, venus mars, jupiter, saturn... I found that saturn has been in retrograde in my sign since 2007 and is getting ready to leave, finally, as far as I can tell, sometime in July, and resume its usual motions through the rest of the signs, not to land in mine again for around another thirty years.”
“And?” the pad croaked. Keith swallowed hard.
“I guess I'm asking... is there light at the end of the tunnel? I guess I already am feeling free-er, less restricted..."
He trailed off and waited for an uncomfortable moment. The bartender, he was a tad chagrined to notice, was still watching and listening intently from the same location while polishing glasses with a white towel.
The gritty voice erupted from the pad once again.
"There is always light at the end of the tunnel; though sometimes it is a train.", it cackled crone-like while an image of a train sprang into motion on the screen and then cut away to another image of saturn and its rings which faded into lady justice dancing backwards away from him. The video collage continued while the hag voice narrated;
"Saturn did go into Libra, and has now retrograded back to Virgo. It will be back to Libra in late July. Getting Saturn off your Sun sign may well free up essential energy for you. Anything that feels better, freer for you, is worth exploring. Saturn can be a useful teacher. Putting aside the frustration, consider whether this time of inertia has left any lessons learned."
Keith sat pondering as the bar tender withdrew to refill a drink.
"The light is always everywhere."
Keith was startled by the voice. One of the triad who had been jacked into the device at the end of the bar had left her companions and was now standing at his right shoulder. She was short and lithe. One half of her head was shaved and white hair hung down to a length just past her chin on the other side. Her irises were bright crimson and her naked flesh was a sort of powder blue hue. She wore what looked like a white buckskin skirt and moccasins and nothing else. Her breast were very small and the nipples were bright, almost as crimson as her eyes.
"The tunnel is our own creation." she concluded and smiled at him.
The woman seated a couple of stools to his right snorted over her drink. Her hair hung in stringy mouse brown lengths about her face and shoulders. She resembled a glob of clay that had been carelessly slopped onto the stool and now threatened to spill out in every direction. Her back and shoulders were slightly hunched, perhaps being tugged mercilessly by the weight of her considerable breasts and belly, all of which was wrapped in what looked like a hot pink Snuggie that hung off of one shoulder exposing her freckled flesh.
"I had a ten year Pluto transit to my natal Saturn/Pluto/Sun-Mercury T-square." she said without looking up from her glass. He noticed that something like tiny live fish seemed to be swimming among the bubbles in the aquamarine tinted elixir. "The T-square is a big, impossible, nasty combo in my chart that will never stop giving me grief and the period of that Pluto transit nearly killed me, quite literally."
She made a sound that might have been limp laughter and took a swig of whatever it was she was drinking, swallowing several of the fish. Keith strained to get a better look at them and was aghast to discover that they resembled itsy bitsy mermaids more than fish. One pressed its all too human hands against the glass and seemed to look at him imploringly with its blinking hyper round eyes. He deduced from that look and the frantic way its fins twitched that it was cognizant of its situation.
"Oddly," the woman continued, "I married a man just prior to the onset of this transit whose Sun was conjunct his Pluto and Mercury at one point of my T-square and had a daughter who had her Sun/Pluto-Saturn/Mercury at the Saturn point, conjunct the transiting Pluto."
She paused and drained her glass. Keith felt sick, like he might scream or cry or vomit, or all of the above. She swiveled around on her stool and regarded him squarely.
"In other words, my own actions, perhaps influenced by the transit, worsened the astrological aspect -- or perhaps just embodied it. The marriage was a disaster - he was extremely psychologically abusive to both me and our daughter, and the daughter was, even apart from him, THE most difficult person I've ever had to deal with. It turns out she has Asperger's Syndrome." She turned back around and tapped her empty glass on the bar nodding to the bartender.
"Anyway," she said as he replaced her drink with another swarming with the little mer creatures, "my point is that these slower moving transits can cause tremendous trouble, depending on how they impact your natal planets. Saturn is one of those that, in my opinion, can cause some of the worst trouble. Not only is it restrictive, but it's known as the gatekeeper to Pluto -- to the Underworld."
She took a drink and coughed, Keith imagined, as a result of some of the little creatures struggling on their way down the hatch. She recovered after a moment and pointed a finger at him.
"By the way, almost to the day Pluto left the sign of that transit, Scorpio, I took a ten-day trip overseas without notice to anyone. I literally ran away -- and interestingly, Pluto had gone into Sag., the sign of travel, and the placement of my Moon in a Grand Trine with Pluto and Mars in my chart -- a very powerful and favorable combo for me."
Satisfied, she returned all of her attention back to her drink, dipping her finger in and stirring her terror stricken captives into activity before swallowing them alive.

The blue girl, whose hand was on her hip now, bit the corner of her lip while starring at the other woman and said, "As the Cosmic Muffin used to say, 'It's a wise man who rules the stars and a fool who is ruled by them.'"
The woman didn't seem to hear.
"I was born September 16, but I'm no Virgo." a voice piped up behind Keith. He had to look over his shoulder beyond the blue girl to find the speaker. It was a man in a fedora and vest sitting at a table with an old Chinese man and someone that looked like the Egyptian god Anubis with six naked teats lined up in neat pairs. He had a fine stubble coming in all over his chin and his sleeves were rolled up above his elbows. His hands were busy with the business of shuffling a deck of cards and a cigarette hung from his lip.
"I'm not a Virgo because I don't believe that constellations, that by the way, are only crude dot to dot drawings, influence my life at all. Sure," he said shrugging and lifting his hands slightly, still holding the cards, "I could not be here if there weren't stars, but that specific ones influence my life is superstition born of desire." he began to deal the cards as he spoke. "The desire to find a cause, a reason, a measure of control for good and bad. It's hard to accept that good and bad things happen accidentally for no reason at all. We roll the dice every minute. Sometimes we win a cigar, sometimes we get burned by one. Chance is in charge.” He winked, “Bets to you Nita."
The Anubis headed bitch pushed some chips into the pot and the Chinese man with long white catfish whiskers responded in a similar manner. The man in the fedora raised.
"But take heart," he said grinning to the other players, "good and bad things happen to the same 'no one.'"
Keith felt himself reddening a little. So what if he wanted to consult the stars? He knew it wasn't a science, but somehow, he suspected, it had brought him here.
"Yes indeed," he heard himself say before he could master his indignation, "but there is this old maxim 'as above, so below, as within, so without' that has made itself known to me."
The blue girl put her hand on his shoulder and started rubbing it.
"Correct." one of her companions from the end of the bar said abruptly. The young topless Asian man had a long mane of raven colored hair. He was unplugging the cable behind his ear. The thing that came out of the port had eight delicate legs and stood in his palm. The iridescent cable was a strand spun from this creature’s abdomen. It cut the unneeded connection and walked along the young man’s arm as he said,
" So whatever was within that was out-pictured is worth exploring."
The blue girl nodded emphatically and pressed herself closer to Keith’s back.
"I don't necessarily believe we are 'ruled' by them, but I certainly believe there are synchronicities, meaningful connections that exist between ourselves, microcosm, and the heaven’s macrocosm. Whether that is wise to believe remains to be seen and is subject to change, of course. I can be somewhat skeptical at times." Keith said, a little distracted by the blue girl’s attentions. She was leaning over his shoulder, listening intently and smiling sweetly at him, so close that he could smell her licorice scented breath.

"Everything influences everything." the clay woman sputtered, coming back to life and rejoining the conversation. "No human being lives in a vacuum separate from the rest of the world or the universe and the forces that govern things do so across space and time." she said stretching her hand out in a sweeping gesture. "There does not have to be a human reason for something happening, but the universe works in the way it does, which is its own reason. And we are part of all that, though we feel separate. No scientist believes it all happens by chance. As Einstein said: ‘God doesn't play dice with the universe.’ "
The man in the fedora laughed harshly.
"A cute phrase, but false." he said. "Einstein didn't want to believe in quantum mechanics, but has been proven wrong. God, well, nature, plays dice after all, they’re called quarks." He grinned at his comrades. The Chinese man yawned.
"I frequently provide my liver cells with evidence that I don't care a fig for their individual lives." said Nita, the Anubis bitch, in a silky voice. "But then, I'm not THE God. I am just A god. And I have pressures on me that they will never comprehend. Actually, I only understand them a little better than they understand me. I am capable of recognizing and interacting with them, individually; but I have little call to do so." Thus saying she raised her glass as if giving a toast and then lapped at the drink until her dog-like muzzle could no longer be adequately accommodated by the glass’s shape.
Lumpy was twisting around on her barstool to face the man in the fedora. It looked as though she might slip right off.
"I don't see quantum mechanics as "dice" or chance. Quarks aren't random either. They choose what to do, but we don't yet know completely why.” She was gesticulating wildly as she spoke, teetering and tottering on her seat, “The universe has a purpose, I think, but not our purpose. We are so arrogant to think that something zillions of times bigger and more complex that us should do things our way. But if we can ally ourselves with those forces that are greater than us, it is not chance we encounter, but deep purposefulness of a nature not so much indifferent to humans as equally inclusive of all things, as well as us - meaning we are no more important than anything else. To me,” she sniffed, “ this is far more wonderful than human-guided purposes. Well, let's say human-led purposes are NOT wonderful at all UNLESS they can tap into the greater, wider universe."
Here she stretched both of her arms as wide as she could and nearly toppled over. She barely managed to catch herself by grabbing onto the bar and twisting back around.
The man in the fedora and Nita laughed and turned all of their attention back to their game.
The blue girl was working on both of Keith’s shoulders now.
"How did you loose your spider?" She whispered, "You don't mean that it died do you? I couldn't bear it if that happened to mine. We have a spare if you want to join us."
"Thanks." Keith said, "I think I better finish my drink though."
He tried to focus on the drink sitting in front of him. How did he get here? Was this because of the stars? Or was it because of the book about the stars? Maybe the stars were innocent. Maybe they had nothing to do with his present reality tunnel crisis. This experience may have been induced by a tornado picking up his house… What was the last thing he remembered doing?
Oddly the only thing he could think of was the little mer person pressed against the inside of the lumpy woman’s glass. It was as if it had happened to him, as if their roles had been reversed. He had been swallowed alive and this was what it was like in the bowels of something a zillion times bigger and more complicated than himself.
Desperately he downed the glass of beer. The bar tender brought him another one. Little girl blue was getting really serious about massaging his shoulders and back. He had a feeling she might like to blow his horn. If she was what he was "out picturing" then maybe what was within was worth exploring...
Then he spied her companions at the end of the bar manipulating the “cassette player” and shivering and realized that what she really wanted was to put spiders in his head…
The woman on the stage started a new song, picking delicately at the empty air over the black box of her theremin.
“Moon river, wider than a mile, I'm crossing you in style some day…”

The Wish

It was a perfect dandelion, set under a crisp plain of bright blue sky. It was straight and tall, a white puff of individual seeds that almost begged the wind to scatter it, each one holding on with the most gentle touch of strength. The dandelion was ripe and ready, finding itself alone in a wide open green field of grass, where bare-boughed oaks stayed in the distance, on the soft sloping hillsides that rimmed the field like the jewels on a crown. A gentle wind began to blow, rattling the long stem in its place. Bending from side to side, but not a seed ventured out. The time had not come, the world was not yet ready. They could all wait, holding onto the stem just a little longer.

She gathered what they needed for a picnic, looking with discerning eyes through her small pantry. There was already a thin pink tablecloth in her black canvas backpack, two ham and cheese sandwiches she had made in the morning while her heart raced with bursts of excitement. There were a couple room temperature bottles of water and a handful of paper napkins. She grabbed a handful of chocolate kisses from a half-full plastic bag and dropped them into the side pocket. She zipped up the backpack and headed out the door, warm golden sunlight greeting her. It was time to play.
The day outside was so fresh. It had rained for several weeks, nearly non-stop, and now it was time to reap the rewards of endurance. In every garden were daffodils and the buds of Icelandic poppies just about to burst. Something about the air was so different, it almost had a sweetness, like the rain had washed away every sad thought and tear. There was something so clean, she couldn’t quite place what it reminded her of, but she felt like she had lived it before.
She drank in the air, the day, enjoying every lick of the cool breeze that slid past her round red cheeks. She walked five block to the park, passing single story houses with large front yards and no gates. Everyone seemed to be gone. No cars in the driveway, no human sounds. It was just her and the quiet dance of leaves, the sun and its returning loyalty, the color of soft petals. The park was more of an open green field, not a place new mothers would bring their children to. There were no play structures or a basketball court. Just a large stretch of grass and oaks along the edges. She liked it, it was a place she came to often, perhaps the last wild, undeveloped place in the city. A breath of fresh, green air.

She saw him in the distance and her heart both jumped out of and fell into her stomach. He was a small shape amid green covered earth and blue sky. Knowing he was there, she walked slightly faster, her heart beating, her palms beginning to sweat. His broad shoulders looked wide in the uncompromising light. He stood now, watching her approach, and with each step closer, she felt ever more shy in his steady gaze. She could not stop smiling. Wind whipped across her teeth, drying them completely. Another step across soft earth, then another. Where he stood was home, within his body was everything she dreamed of. The space between them grew smaller and smaller, until there was no space, their bodies pressing tightly.

“Hi,” he said, taking a small step back. “right here, this is the perfect spot, look,” he pointed to the ground, “I thought you might want to make a wish.”

She followed the invisible trail from his finger to the grass, and there, was a dandelion. Ripe with seed and wishes, ready for her hopes, for all she wanted to tell the sky. She looked up, smiling at him, giving him a kiss on his wide lips. She looked at him for a moment, then bent over, plucking the dandelion gently from its base. She stood up straight again, looked at him once and then closed her eyes. She made a wish...and blew, sending her dreams towards the moon.

The Symbols

She saw a numeral, a 3.

An upside-down triangle.

Beside it, a triangle with the point towards heaven.

There were more symbols, she could feel them talking with soft words, in a language she could not understand, but the shapes had obscured themselves, blending into each other like colored oils.

She had awoken in her warm bed of feathers and fine silks to the bright white light of day. She had dreamed of a closed door and two men with white horns, but as her eyes fluttered open, she was surprised to find herself alone, covered in day. She lay still for several minutes, tuning into the metronome of her heart, listening to the sounds of the room and the music just beyond the stone walls. There were animals and merchants and men, all moving slowly, all with their own particular calls. Some with brass bells and hammers, other’s shouting their wares and demands. It was a typical morning, a known rhythm. She could picture it all. The smell of worn leather and grease, smoke and incense, the scent of hay.

And though the sounds seemed familiar, there was another that lay the foundation to all she heard. She lay still, focusing on the steady beat of the clock, such a faithful object of normality, always ticking. It was the sound of the moving brass hands that lulled her to sleep and it was the repetition that somehow called her from the dreams.

And then, as though controlled by a puppet master, she brought her warm pink hand to her face, slower than she would have moved her arm, so much slower than her tendency. The hand came towards her as though it needed attention, as though it had just been birthed from the warm folds of silk and was now taking its first breath in a new waterless world. Here was bright light. Here was something that could see. Eyes and a face, a mind to comprehend.

The dainty white hand hovered a few inches above her face, just close enough for minute ripples of alarm to spread as she saw the series of numbers and shapes on her index finger. It had not been there when she went to bed. She had gotten into the curious habit of studying her body in the mirror before bed, looking for such strange signs. It had turned into a compulsion. She didn’t know what she was searching for and she smiled shyly at herself in the mirror and candlelight flickered, a bit embarrassed by the nightly ritual, but she did it again and again, looking for something. There had only been pale skin and freckles. But in the night something had happened. She searched her dreams for a clue. A door, white horns. She looked deeper, allowing her body to relax and drift, to begin the journey once again.

Horses,
a field with a book,
a man’s face she could not see.

She pulled herself out of the waves and looked at the symbols once again. She closed her eyes slowly, feeling her heart. It was calm, there was no fear. The ripples had faded.

She had grown to expect strange things, to hope for them perhaps, though part of her mind held onto modesty and stable things like stones and wax. But as she learned always, repeatedly, all things were possible in Diappinee. Puppets and humans alike played, devising ways to come through the tunnels left wide open in dreams.

The Hanged Man

He’s waiting to fall like a fruit that falls when it is ripe and ready to be eaten.
In this way he waits calmly for his moment to come, allowing his energy to accumulate in his head.
He waits to fall and the sensation of falling is all the time growing more and more intense.
The moment that he waits for is the moment of the fall.
The riper the fruit the more intense is the sensation of falling, until the fall becomes reality.

This is the man that is hanging.

We all have had that sensation when we sleep, that sense that we are falling (or that we are about to fall) but we avoid it. His message is to see things from another point of view and to allow ourselves to fall.

He is suspended in the air without touching the earth. His hair looks like the snakes of a medusa, his yellow arch is like the halo of the saints. The trunk that he’s hanging from is like the cross of Jesus, and his clothing is like that of a dancing buffoon. His face is serene and his eyes, which watch attentively, seem to invite you to establish visual contact with him. There is always the impulse to turn him around and see him from a different perspective, or one has to see him upside down..

The hanged man.
They tied his foot, because his foot was his head.

The natural fall.
As in birth, it’s the head that first comes out to see the light.
The rope that is tied around his foot is the maternal rope that comes from the navel.

Being hung up as he is, he doesn’t look down towards the ground, he looks forward without worrying about his situation. It seems that he is where he is by his own will, without resistance, without wanting to come down.

If he could speak, what would he say?
If I could ask him why he is there, what would he answer?
Was he at sometime in the past walking like any other man?
Did he climb up there for some reason and did he tie up his own foot?
And what is he doing there?
He doesn’t wait for anybody it seems.
And why does he have one leg folded and his arms at his back?
Are you the forbidden fruit of paradise?
If I were to stand in front of you and talk to you, where would I look, into your eyes or into your mouth?

The light that shines in you is a light that comes out of your head, but it’s a yellow light, as if it was lighting up your presence.

You appear to be a neutral being, neither good nor bad. You don’t smile, you don’t cry, you seem like a battery that is being charged.
How much longer are you going to be there charging?
And what will happen when you fall, will you feel that there is no further sense in living?

You will stop being what you are. Only hung up can you feel good, your feet don’t want to touch the ground.

You seem like the opposite of the crucified Jesus Christ. You are there without suffering, with your head facing down, alive and serene, without expecting anything.
Watching.

It is not in suffering that enlightenment is found.
It is in the other direction.

You are hung up and your blood runs from your feet to your head. In your head the energy accumulates and your folded leg has something to do with sexual energy. Perhaps you are holding it in with that foot, sending it from that place where it seeks to be released up to the head.

It appears that you have a certain kind of discipline to be there, straight, peaceful, and maintaining that strange position.

Alone In The Light

The sunlight streams through the half open curtains in a faded yellow that tastes of old forgotten afternoons when the air is almost too thick to breathe and bodies become too heavy to call into action. There are a few magazines strewn on the floor and a half finished bottle of water on the night table. There are a few pictures on the wall and a summer dress hanging from a hook on the back of the door.
Elinore is lying on the large bed in the center of the room, eating dried mangoes. Her only garment is a long white shirt that reaches all the way down to the middle of her tanned strong thighs. For a long while she has been debating with herself on what to do with this afternoon that seems to never end, but all she has been able to muster is getting the dried mangos from the kitchen to slide into her mouth, one by one. She chews very slowly, relishing the bitter taste as her eyes open and close, taking in the yellow sunlight.
Every so often she lets her head fall back on the pillow, her long black hair spreading over the white pillowcase like an explosion of thoughts over an empty page. She then pretends to sleep, but she pretends for an empty room, since there is no one else with her. Maybe if she pretends long enough, she will actually fall asleep and when she wakes up, this afternoon of nothingness will be over. But after a few moments of yellow illuminated darkness behind closed eyelids, she props herself up on her right shoulder once again, and she takes another bite of dry mango.
From behind the wall at her back come the subtle sounds of an electric bass being plucked. The amplified sound is hidden away in a world of headphones, so Elinore can only hear bits and pieces of muted riffs and walking bass lines which travel through the still air of the apartment like tiny colorful trains without a final destination.


Veronika stares at her bass as she plays, repeating certain passages over and over, trying to make sure that they are permanently recorded in her muscle memory, that they become as much a part of her as brushing her teeth or walking on an empty sidewalk. When she makes a mistake, she shakes her head and tries the same line again, over and over, until she is content that she has truly learned the part.
Veronika is sitting on the edge of her bed, with the long and heavy bass draped across her thighs. She is wearing a Nirvana T-shirt and an old pair of blue jeans with large rips across the knees. Her feet are bare and the cold wooden floor feels good against her naked skin. Her long red hair is pulled back away from her face and tied tightly into a long pony tail, not the way she usually wears it, but it helps to keep it out of her way when she practices. Her thin white arms cradle the bass lovingly, with an urgent intensity that is palpable in her movements but which she would never consciously admit to herself.
Each note she plays is processed and amplified by a small processor that sits close to her toes. The sound is channeled directly into her ears through a small set of headphones that she keeps just for this particular purpose. In her ears the notes rumble, distort and vibrate like huge slabs of stone tumbling into a vast expanse of black sand. In her world, the sound is loud and overwhelming, but it is all a secret that she can keep to herself, a secret waiting to be revealed at a later time.
Every so often she pulls the headphones back to make sure that the sound is completely enclosed and inaudible to anyone standing outside. She doesn’t want to disturb Elinore. It is her general policy to be as quiet as possible when she practices. She knows how easy it is for casual friendships to go sour.
She is specially concerned with being very quiet today. Veronika saw Elinore earlier and she looked so tired that she could barely even say hello. She might have given up on practicing at all this afternoon, but there will be a show this very night and she must be ready. It is as important as anything in her life, and more important than most other things. So she continues to practice with fervor while being as quiet as possible, her face a mask of intense concentration and barely controlled stress.


Elinore stands up for a moment and turns on the TV. She turns the volume down low, as low as it can go while still being audible from her post on the bed. Something to let her attention wander away, something to make her forget about the time slowly passing. Anything. Anything at all.
Even though they are not talking directly to her, the sound of the talking heads makes it seem as if there is someone else in the room, as if someone is talking to her, someone that doesn’t need to be answered, someone that will continue to talk no matter how quiet and still she remains on the bed. Over the bits of dialogue, she can still hear little bits of sound from Veronika’s bass here and there but it doesn’t really bother her. The silence is too strong to be disrupted, it would take an earthquake to break apart the yellow solitude.


“…there are many opinions as to the true nature of angels. It is not clear where the idea started, where it originates. We now talk to Maria who has been studying Angels for the last ten years.”

When she first realizes the nature of the show, Elinore has the impulse to stand up and shut the TV off once again. But she is already laying down and feeling too comfortable. Her long legs are stretched over the rumpled white sheets and she can’t bring herself to stand up and shut it off again. The coolness of the cloth against her flesh is delicious and she can’t bring herself to part from its embrace. She may as well listen to what this woman has to say. At least until she is done with the mangos.

“We must then remember that all these paintings, all these icons, they are only reference points… we are talking about a real phenomenon that has degraded over time into an idea that we now believe we understand… maybe we have already decided that there is no such thing as angels… but what are we really denying? We have to mean something by a word in order to deny its existence, don’t you think? So what is it that we don’t believe in when we say that they don’t exist? Or what are we really saying when we say that we do believe? When we say that we know and that we have faith? What is it that we have faith in? Belief in a vague unknown is tantamount to belief in nothing…”

Elinore again closes her eyes and simulates sleep for her absent audience. The yellow turns red beneath her eyelids and she rolls back face down on the bed, still chewing on a bit of mango. She stretches her whole body and a chill runs up and down her spine. A very soft moan escapes her lips and she giggles lightly into the mattress. Nobody can hear her and yet she wants the subtle sense of quiet to continue uninterrupted.
She finds herself thinking about angels. Why angels? Why right now? It’s strange how these ideas come from out there, from a world of electronic communication that is not specifically thinking of her, and yet now the idea is multiplying within her, seeking answers for questions that weren’t there at all just a few moments before.
What do people mean by angels really? She thinks of medieval paintings, of Catholic churches full of winged little naked children.
Why is she thinking of it at all? She makes an effort once again to stand up to turn off the TV so she can forget the subject entirely. But it seems that she would rather stretch her body some more and listen, listen quietly at least a little longer.

A news report interrupts the show. Elinore has lost track of what they are saying anyway, so the two combine into a strange amalgam of voices with a turbulent meaning, a meaning that somehow never coalesces into a single clearly expressed statement, and yet teases the most forward tendrils of her mind with the possibility of understanding:
“…the 24-year-old pop icon is the first artist of the new digital age to reach the five million sales mark, an accolade which came on the back of her two smash singles: ‘Poker Face’ and ‘Just Dance.’ The record was broken when ‘Poker Face’ topped five million sales, after ‘Just Dance’ achieved the same impressive feat…”
Five million individual minds have reached through the ethereal links of the internet to grasp at Lady Gaga’s music, or is it really at her that they are grasping, at her body, at her mind, at her secret dream world, at the myths that she only suggests while slipping sideways away from final labeling and categorization? Do they actually wish to touch her, even if it is only done through invisible fingers that travel through underground channels of quantic vibration?
So many hands reaching out to grab at her… What must it feel like to have all those nodes of attention focused on her, wishing for her, wanting her, needing her. Five million different minds focused on a single point of light, hidden behind the fragile cover of carefully arranged physical barriers.
Where is she now? What does she feel? Is it in any way comparable to what Elinore feels or has the cumulative intensity of all that attention lifted her bodily to another plane of vibrational existence? No way to truly know, no way to find out.

Another mango for now, another moment of closed eyes and a ritualized attempt at simulated sleep. And behind closed eye lids she sees Lady Gaga’s mouth singing:
“I want your drama,
the touch of your hand,
I want your leather studded kiss in the sand,
I want your love…”
Yes your love, no matter what form it may take, no matter what it may turn me into, no matter what it may do to me, no matter how it may transform me, no matter that it may kill me and change me into something I never suspected was possible, something I never wanted to be.
But here there is nothing, silence, yellow silence, closed eyes, the taste of mango and music coming from nowhere, music that simply repeats in little fragments of concentrated attention.


The phone rings next door. Veronika has the impulse to ignore it but then she reluctantly answers. She presses the small cell phone receiver to her ear, questioning her own decision to pick it up. On the other end, her friend Narina speaks up as soon as she hears the connection being established, rushing to let her words out before they fade away and lose their charged content of raw emotion:
“Listen to this… listen…Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light. Jack Dempsey said it…walking with a friend… in the dark…is better… that walking alone in the light…”
Veronika wrinkles her brow. For a moment she is unsure of how to respond. She then remembers it is Narina, and it is just like her to say something like this, out of the blue, and it is just like her to expect some kind of answer. Veronica then carefully responds, trying to make sense of her own thoughts as they pour out of her:
“I’m not sure that I understand what it means…I think I like it…I guess it depends on who it is that walks with you, no?… alone is not always the same … and there are different kinds of friends… aren’t there?… In any case, I don’t think it was Jack Dempsey… it may have been Hellen Keller…why did you think it was Jack Dempsey? You know that I have a show tonight?”
For a fragment of a second the mention of Hellen Keller invokes a world of total darkness, of complete and final isolation, a chamber where nobody may enter and nobody may leave, where there will be no rescue coming, no escape, where loneliness will keep on pulsing in a steady beat for all eternity without any relief in sight. For that fragment of a second, there is no friend, there is no light, there is no walking. There is only utter solitude and the complete silence that comes with it.
“Yeah, I guess I’m not really sure who said it…but it still touches me… even if I’m not totally sure what it means… what it could mean…there’s something about it that resonated within me… I can’t really explain it… like a bell, you know? A bell that rings inside of me and I can’t place it… a friend… maybe it’s just that word…you know what I mean? I hope you do…”
There is a new silence between them, a silence not quite as complete as the one invoked a moment earlier, but a silence nonetheless, and the ethereal lines of electronic connection carry only their breaths, communicating in a way that transcends all codes or symbols.
“Anyway… a show tonight? Maybe I will come… maybe if I come I could walk with you in the dark…” Narina giggles at herself. “I’m not sure though… I can’t really promise... I’ll try to be there…”
And just as suddenly as she appeared from nowhere, Narina is gone, leaving behind a fading echo of a word, a vision, an ungraspable taste or color.
Friend, friend, friend… who is really a friend and who isn’t? How would you know a friend if there was only a dark chamber without exits? How would you recognize a friendly impulse coming from the outside?
Veronika shakes her head and returns to her practice. No use thinking about such things when there is a show to rehearse for.


Jennifer waits on the driver’s seat of the elegant limousine. The uniform doesn’t quite fit her and she still feels unsure about her new role. Her black hair is fixed in a small bun and hidden by a little gray hat that turns her into an official representative of the limousine company. Her legs feel hot and trapped within the newly pressed gray uniform and the leather seats feel paradoxically uncomfortable under the weight of her customed body. It all makes her feel strange, displaced, as if her brown skin and her big black eyes have been imprisoned in a role she can’t fully embody yet. She wonders momentarily if this is what happens to people when they finally start to grow up: they get encased in gray and pushed into the stage of a play that was never fully understood to begin with.
She found this job only a few days earlier and, due to one of her new coworkers being sick, she has been lucky enough to score one of the best assignments in the whole agency, their most prized and well known client. The singer is expected to come out of her hotel at any time and then she will be here, in the same car, in the same space as her, breathing the same air, vibrating in the same chamber.
Jennifer feels rushes of excitement that travel like electrical currents up and down her small thin body, they make her flesh turn red and her breath get faster and harsher. It is such pure luck that she finds herself here, now, waiting for such a famous character to step into her car. She runs her hand through her hair and looks at her face in the rearview mirror. She wants to make sure she looks just perfect, just in case somebody looks at her, just in case she says hello.
She heard the announcement this morning. The entire wide sidewalk in front of the hotel is crawling with reporters and paparazzi. All waiting for her. All eager to ask questions and take pictures, all eager to take away another little piece of her on wings of electronic chatter. All eager to see her. All waiting.
For Her.
Jennifer feels the urge to play her music in the car, maybe she will think it is funny, maybe she will smile and then talk to her and be nice. Or maybe she won’t ever look at her at all. Someone like her, she must be so busy that there won’t be any time to talk to a driver, another face in the crowd, lost in a sea of eager eyes hoping for greatness to touch them, even if only briefly.
And yet Jennifer can only hope that something does happen. In fact something has happened, but she wants something more. She wants a word, a look, a smile. Something. She will be sure to take that little bit, any little bit the comes out of her presence and treasure it.
The people outside rush towards the front doors of the hotel. Maybe someone is coming. Jennifer feels as if some of that attention is rubbing off on her, as if she is so close to the source that some of that brightness is spreading through her chest and making her a faithful satellite, a secondary source of light in that great darkness that surrounds all of them, all of us.
She relishes the sensation. It reminds her of love, of making love, of being kissed and touched and hugged and kissed again. But it is somehow grander. It pulses from a place that seems to come from nowhere, a place beyond the realm of the physical, a place she has never truly explored before.
Maybe this is what spiritual people feel when they have their strange experiences, their communions with something higher. This is certainly the closest Jennifer has ever been to something higher than her.
Disparate thoughts clash within her, threatening to fuse into a single vision but then she shakes her head and tries to maintain her attention on the wide glass doors, the same place where everyone else is looking.
She will be coming out soon. Soon. She will be coming out.

The phone rings and Veronika picks up immediately. Narina again. She has apparently thought of more things to say. Veronika shakes her head with a kind of benevolent annoyance. She has to practice. It is urgent. But she doesn’t have the heart to simply blow Narina off completely. Instead she prepares to listen for a moment, before telling her that she really has to go.
“Ultimately, to be with someone is better than to be alone… I think that’s what it’s saying… no matter what, no matter who, no matter where, it’s better to be with someone than to have nobody…”
“Yeah…that sounds right…I mean, I think that is what it is saying…but it’s still a vague message… maybe it’s too general for me…I would like to think that I would be a bit more selective… I wouldn’t want to be with just anyone… you know?…I can see it though… we don’t want to be alone, right?”
“Right…maybe that is why you play music? So that you won’t be alone…maybe it’s a way of calling people towards you…maybe it’s a way of bringing people together? Could that be it? Could that be what hides under most of what we do? Under all that we do?”
“Maybe… I can see what you are saying… maybe you are right… or at least partially right… I don’t know… I don’t like to think of it that way….I hope there is more to it than that…I think I am fine alone… I can be anyway…but sometimes I do need someone around…it depends on the moment…but I can enjoy playing all on my own as well…playing music I mean…it doesn’t have to be done to call anyone…I can simply play… all alone…just like now…”
“I’m sure you are hoping for a crowd tonight though… you don’t want to be alone up there…alone under the hot stage lights…you don’t want the club to be empty right?”
“Definitely not…speaking of which, I need to get back to practicing right now…maybe we can talk about this later tonight… after the show?”
“Yeah no problem… better to walk with a friend… it’s still ringing in my ears… anyway, maybe I’ll see you tonight…”


“Lady Gaga may have figured out the secret formula to attracting the attention of the masses… like Madonna and Michael Jackson and a few others before her…why her and not someone else? What is it about her?”
It is the voice of Ha, in her guise as a TV reporter. Her dress is a calculated balance between sexiness and formality, letting some of her cleavage show but also evoking the kind of straight suit a banker would wear. Something to make them see me, something to make them trust me.
When she talks into the camera, there’s a hint of confusion in her voice, as if she doesn’t actually understand what she is saying. She is merely reading what others have written for her, reading what others have asked her to read. But the confusion is so subtle most viewers won’t pick up on it. Most of them will only see a beautiful female face, soft white skin, intense and sharp black eyes. Most of them are doing something else anyway, they only leave the TV on so that they won’t feel alone, so they will bathe in the illusion of togetherness with faraway people that will never hear them breathe, will never miss them when they’re gone.
None of these distracted viewers will notice that slight hint of confusion in her voice. But Ha can hear it in herself and she wishes she could get rid of it, wishes she could extinguish it and settle into her true role of serene and wise communicator of abstract electronic truth. With time it will certainly go away. It is practice that is needed, practice and perseverance. Then there will be no further confusion, no hesitation, no shivering edge.
“She is certainly talented, but maybe there’s a particular kind of talent that can attract that amount of attention, maybe that is a talent in itself, like writing, or singing…no matter what we say about it, it certainly remains a mystery.”

“I want your love
I want your revenge
I want your ugly
I want your disease
I want your everything…”

“And back to our show…”

Ha thinks to herself, in that moment of complete isolation after the camera has shut down and everyone has turned their attention elsewhere:
“What is she really saying? Who is she talking to? I don’t think she’s talking to a lover, to a potential lover, or a current lover or one from the past… I think she’s talking to us… all of us…she knows we will take revenge on that which we love… like Elvis, like Michael Jackson…too many people screaming for a single being… wanting them…loving them… and then turning around and biting hard… biting so hard that the object of their love gets torn to pieces…letting their love turn into furious and naked aggression… grabbing hands and cruelly nailing them to a cross of shame and destruction… Could she know it all? Could she know ahead of time what fate has in store for her? Could she see the whole pattern and embrace it… embrace the entire show… from beginning to end?… She wants our love, she wants our revenge… she wants our ugly… she wants our disease…the disease that we can’t help but allow to flourish when our feelings have been invoked too intensely… the disease that turns our love into hate, our adoration into disgust… she knows how much it will hurt and she still invokes it in her song…she wants our everything…”

The phone rings. Ha picks it up.
“Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light…I’ve been thinking about it all afternoon…”
“Narina? I can’t talk now… I’m about to go on the air again… we do these little reports in between commercials… I have to be ready…”
“I know, I know… you’re the tenth person I call… after you I will stop calling… everyone has something to do… I just wanted to talk for a bit… but I understand… I do…I’ve just been thinking about this quote, that’s all…I’ve been thinking about it all day… I can’t seem to stop…anyway, I hope you do a good report today…I hope we get to talk soon…”
Ha closes the cell phone shut. What was she thinking about just before the cell phone rang?

A new voice comes on the TV. It sounds like a teenager or a woman in her early twenties. She has a bit of a Spanish accent. Probably someone they found on the street and decided to interview.
“…as a catholic we believe in angels… we believe that angels are ‘messengers of God’… I have family members who are Christian Fundamentalist who firmly believe that it is a sacrilege to believe in angels.... needless to say we don't talk religion…what’s the point right? It will only end in a bad argument… personally, I believe in them and believe that Lucifer was a fallen angel.... he lost his rightful place next to the Father…he ended up exiled to a land of fire and pain…I don't go overboard with angels though…not like a lot of people do. I am more interested in God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the Saints…the Saints should not be confused with the Angels…you know what I mean?”
Now an older authoritative voice, maybe a professor in some old distinguished University library. Elinore has her eyes closed, so she can only guess at his appearance, she can see the wall of books at his back, a wooden pipe in his hand, a closely trimmed white beard and a pair of glasses sliding down a thin upturned nose.
“Angel…This word comes, as you may remember, from the Greek word "angelo" and the Hebrew word "malak" …the term simply means messenger… In God's word, angels were chiefly employed by God to deliver His oracles to men…”
And a third voice. This one talks with a very slow rhythm, leaving gaps of patient space in between the sound of the syllables. It is low and thick and profoundly male, aggressive in a way too subtle to counteract with reason.
“Angels then were creatures that had transcended our worldly plane and were now focusing the attention of many, fusing it into a single act of will… thus many acting as one through the fusion of their attention…through this unification a higher will could be manifested…the identity of the Angel would be immaterial separate from this fusion…the Angel could be seen as an amalgamation, a fusion of many into one…”
Human. Saint. Angel. Messenger. God. Words and words and more words. Could there be any meaning hiding behind any of them? And if there were something real to which they were attached, how long had it been since the attachment had been broken and the words started to drift through the skies like tiny balloons full of helium whose strings have been cut?

Elinore finally manages to stand up and turn off the TV. Enough with this show. It’s going nowhere. When the loud sound of the talking heads goes away, she can more clearly hear the little riffs that Veronika is practicing, tiny ribbons of sound that twirl upon themselves and find their way across the many barriers that stand between them.
Elinore smiles. For a moment she thinks that maybe she will go to the show tonight. Maybe. If she can get enough energy to go out. If she can let go of the simple pleasures of her bed and her room.
She lays down once again to finish her mango. There’s only a few pieces left. Maybe she can go to the show, but maybe not. It may be better to just stay in tonight. It feels so good to be alone. So quiet. So perfect. So drenched, from head to toe, in bright, yellow light. Alone and touched by nothing but sounds without origin, messages without a voice, poems without rhyme.

The Past Comes Calling

Behind his cluttered towers of books and old fashioned type writer he could be as eccentric as he liked. This was his fortress. Within it he could let his hair rise in an electrified bride of Frankenstein way without feeling the need to tame it with a comb. In here, behind these impregnable walls of dusty books, he could wear his thermal underwear coupled with just a pair of jeans and fear no reprimand. He was the prince in this kingdom of fiction and nonfiction and coffee table conversational items and references. Letting his appearance blend with the general clutter, his mind could wander down forbidden corridors poking into thoughts left undisturbed by most. He could be David the Heretic, David the pervert, David the mad, or David the meek and no one would know.
Unless he wrote it, which he often did, and sometimes shared it at the weekly writer’s workshops or poetry jams hosted in the back of the shop. Even in this case he was still safe within his kingdom and those delirious poets and various unloved writers either appreciated his own breed of madness or else were too self absorbed to notice him at all.
He could remember too well the days when he had written in spiral bound notebooks in his bedroom and had feared discovery, the time when his sister accidentally carried one of his notebooks away mistaking it for her own, her horrified reaction, the subsequent beating from his father, his mother’s weeping and begging to know where they had gone wrong.
He could remember and the remembrance made this new phase of life all the more precious for its spacious anonymity and freedom of mind and word. They were, after all, only words and held no power of their own. Their power was lodged in the myriad of associations evoked in the reader or listener rather than in the words themselves. He was one of a rare breed that appreciated this truth and thus had no fear of them and twisted them every which way and used them to penetrate the carefully guarded darkness secreted away in the hearts of others, even and especially at the risk of calling forth their wrath and terrible sorrow.
Hunkered over a single serving of raspberry yogurt one afternoon he heard the bells hung over the front door jingle as someone entered. He finished spooning a portion into his mouth before looking up to greet the patron. Raising his eyes and wiping his mouth he beheld with astonishment the sparkling blue eyes of his sister. Her blond hair hung in a short bob around her face and her mouth was creased with lines that betrayed years spent frowning.
“Reina.” He uttered her name in shock, wondering what she was doing in this city, how had she found him, why she was here breaching his defenses.
She smiled a little.
“Hello David.”
Then he only stared at her. All that he wanted to know was what she wanted but it seemed callused to ask after 10 years of estrangement. He couldn’t think of what else he should say so he stared.
“Daddy’s sick David.” She said after a few moments, and big tears welled up in her eyes. “He’s dying.”
Again he could think of nothing to say so he merely watched the tears form in her big eyes and splash down upon her cheeks. She dried them with the back of a gloved hand and said,
“I’ve come to bring you home to see him.” She sniffed and looked at him waiting.
He thought for a moment that he might be dreaming so he leaned forward to the antique type writer and began to type an account of what was happening so that he would remember it better when he woke up.
His fingers clacked away at the keys and Reina said softly,
“David.” But he kept typing and then she cried hysterically: “David! Did you hear me? Daddy’s dying.”
He stopped typing and looked up at her .
“I heard you.” He said and leaned back in the chair rubbing his eyes with both palms.
“We should go as soon as possible. Before it’s too late.” She said “The flight will take about eight hours.”
As she spoke, she adjusted her hand bag.
“I’m not going.” David said simply.
“What?” her voice was high and demanding, “He’s dying. Don’t you understand?”
“I understand, and I’m not going.” He answered nonchalantly. Then he stood up. “Thank you Reina, for coming, for uh, finding me and giving me the choice. I… appreciate that. But I won’t go. I don’t want to see him. Even if he is dying. I don’t want to. You could have just called me, you didn’t have to come all the way here.”
“I know,” she said bleakly. “But I knew that if I called, you wouldn’t come. I thought that if I came to get you, you might.”
“I won’t” he told her with a small shake of his head.
She leaned forward and took a pen from his desk and wrote a phone number on the corner of a sheet of paper.
“My cell number.” She explained. “I’m leaving on the 4:30 flight out of SFO. I already bought your ticket, if you change your mind.”
“I won’t.” he repeated softly.
She sniffed again and this time he offered her a tissue from a dusty Kleenex box. She dabbed her eyes and blew her nose and pocketed the tissue. Then she waved the tips of her gloved fingers and walked back out of the door, the little bells overhead tolling her departure.
David sat back down and brushed the keys of the typewriter absently with his finger tips. His fortress had been compromised. The same piles of dog eared brittle paged books still towered all about him, but suddenly they were an ineffective sanctuary. He no longer felt strong or safe, but rather small and weak, as though he were a twelve year old boy hiding in his bedroom, waiting for his father to come and dole out the punishment he didn’t deserve.
He realized that his hands were trembling so he folded them in his lap and gazed at the door. Breathing slowly, he let the phantoms of his childhood evaporate under the radiance of the present. He was a man now, and the body of his father would soon be returned to the earth, and Reina would be gone before morning. When their mother died perhaps she would only call, and that would be even easier than this.
After a moment the trembling subsided and his battlements felt once again secure. He picked up his yogurt and finished it, licking the spoon clean when it was all gone.