Small things bring a smile

Lay on the bed
Body like lead
It’s already half past the noon

Swallowing guilt
For this brick wall you’ve built
That blots out the sun and the moon

The Doc gave you pills
For the cure of these ills
But you still feel like going to Confession

And you cannot revive
Or feel half alive
For your friend is the devil Depression

All at once you can hear
A soft purr in your ear.
The pussycat wanting to play

It assumes the position
And now it’s your mission
And the first time you’ve laughed the whole day.

From Thralldom to Salvation

“Are you an anxious person?”, the therapist said.

Our man then recalled the thoughts and emotions that preceded his blackout at the wheel on that wintry night not so long ago.  He had awakened, after what seemed only a few seconds, with his car in the ditch, a fat lip, and a bloody nose.  Otherwise, physically undamaged.  It had been the scare of his life, and he was still jittery and shaking.  Presently, he called for a tow truck, and was glad of the delay that allowed him to collect his thoughts.

“I wouldn’t say so.  At least, not until a few months ago”, he responded.

He then had to relate the unnatural attraction he had developed for a girl he had not even met, and how it had mushroomed to bring him to this state.

“Your tests, scans, etcetera, have all come back normal, and now here you are with me.  Are you aware of what stress, even the emotional type, can do to a person?  I believe your blackout was a “shutdown” reaction to the conflicts within your mind.  You have been close to losing control.  There is something called Situational Depression, and your symptoms are very close to this.  I will prescribe you some medication which should help, but you need to see if you can get some closure on this.  If you’re willing to risk seeing this girl just to tell her your feelings, then talk to family and friends, discreetly, if they are involved, and find out what to do.”

After some hard thought, and hearing that his nephew’s band had an upcoming date at another tavern, he contrived to be there that night, while his wife was otherwise occupied.  Knowing his guilt, but acting as casually as possible, he asked if they had any memory of “that odd looking dancer” from where they had played before.  His nephew grinned, and said “Oh, that’s just Sydney.  She’s there almost every Saturday night.  Just a fun loving kid, and doesn’t hang out with anyone in particular, I think.  Dances by herself most of the time.”

In the end, when he learns that the band will be back at their old bar for an encore, he makes it a night out, knowing that family and friends will once again be there.  It’s the same loud crowd, the band competing with them, and, after an hour or two, Sydney is there.  His wife says “Isn’t that the same girl that was here last winter?  I remember her dancing all alone.  You kept watching her.”  “I enjoyed her dance”, he says.  “I must go and give her my compliments.”

When the song is over, he walks up to the girl.  It’s the first time he has seen her eyes.  He holds back the rush of emotion, says nothing about the months he has gone through.  Only touches her hand, smiles, and says “how lovely you dance”.  She brings her eyes to his for just a second, tilting her head strangely to the side, gives a radiant smile, and a small squeeze to his hand in return.

The next morning, he wakes up with the cure.

Previous posts on this story are:

Captivated

From Captivated, to Captivity

The Captive, in thrall


The Captive, in thrall

Almost a year from the day he saw his “tiny dancer”, he still struggles to bury the image, and sees this as a strange and fascinating illness of the soul.

Am I weak? Evil? Insane, to let this affect me thus?
Has my life been so devoid of joy that I see, every day, the afterimage of this flicker of brightness?

He thinks he has been a fool, and would be justly held to ridicule if another soul ever knew of this.

And so…I need help from someone.  NO.  I will conclude this myself.  There will be a way to find her.  Ask some embarrassing questions, perhaps expose my desperation, if only it will come to the point of seeing her once more, just to tell her…..what?  That I’ve been in thrall to her image for a year?  It matters not.  I must do it.

His resolve hardens.  He gets into his car and heads out the wintry road, not knowing what he will do at his destination.  Thoughts are running, running, running, as on a treadmill.  This is dangerous.

Halfway now, halfway, when the thing happens to him, an electrical feeling up the back of his neck, vision going grey, then black unconsciousness.

for background on this, see  http://secret-lifeof.com/2017/11/06/captivated/
and  http://secret-lifeof.com/2017/11/06/from-captivated-to-captivity/
and for final story see

From Thralldom to Salvation


Illicit

She colours when he looks her way,
a blush so fair to see.
They met upon a winter’s day,
but it was not to be.

He saw she had the sweetest heart.
She cared for him unasked, but
their lifelines were too far apart,
and their secret was unmasked.

Those who saw them, gossip spoke,
though the two of them were chaste.
Illicit friendship, up in smoke.
It’s said they had “no taste”.

When he saw her, ‘mongst her peers,
she preened for him alone.
Their disapproval brought her tears,
in private, and at home.

Regrets he had, and understood
perhaps what he had done.
Affection, and the common good,
were pitted, one on one.

He stayed away, for her own sake,
and waited for the day
that they might meet, by some mistake,
as in a tragic play.

Her chipmunk cheeks and Bambi eyes
beamed back at him in dreams.
And, Oh!  That Soul!  He ne’er denies
his own has been redeemed.

From Captivated, to Captivity

There’s something called obsession, and by all accounts it is “unhealthy”.
His fleeting glimpse of a lone dancer, in a season past, will not fade.  Instead, it has sprouted within him, a seedling spreading indelible branches into many directions.

On one of these possible paths, he sees himself returning to the scene, making improbable enquiries as to who she may be, when she might reappear, so that he may perhaps experience the vision once again.  On another, he wonders what he really has seen, and the whys of its powerful effect.  It has assumed the form of a bright filament of spirit within his mind.

He’s painted this, unwittingly, with his own brushstrokes, like a mad Van Gogh, and can’t tear himself away from the image.

This descent has taken him too far, and he tells himself that he must “come back”, for his daily life now seems dreamlike, and his artwork the reality to which he is drawn.

“What now is my path?” He thinks.
See  https://secret-lifeof.com/2017/11/09/the-captive-in-thrall/

Captivated

In a small, crowded, noisy bar, on a winter’s night, he’s surrounded by family and friends.  There’s a dislike for the setting:  Having to shout to be heard at your own table, the inevitable loud or belligerent drunks, the tiny bathroom always occupied.  He stays anyway, because the band is partly family too.

Gradually, unknowingly, he starts to tune out of the forced conversations, and even the band’s attempts to be heard.  They are good players, he knows, and he likes the music.  He identifies with them, and sees them trying to balance the desire to be heard, and yet be savvy enough not to overpower.  They have spent many hours on practice for this night.

The occasional tug from his wife brings him back to the table chatter, and, apologetically, he rejoins the shouting.  After a time, he slips back into reverie, and notices that no one is up dancing, save for a solitary figure in a dimly lit corner by the window.  It is a girl, probably just of drinking age.  Not beautiful or showy, dressed in a sweater and jeans.  She is holding her glass of beer, has her eyes closed, and is smiling.   It’s a slow quiet number that’s playing, and she sways in one spot, her face upraised to the light.  Seemingly, she is ignored by everyone but himself.  He is drawn to the simplicity and soulfulness of this dancer, and wonders if she came here by herself, or, if not, why there is scant reaction from those around her.  She stays for song after song, nursing that single glass of beer.

Once again, he’s brought out of trance by his tablemates. Gets a couple of annoyed glances and some queries as to why he is watching “that drunk girl”.  He does not think of her that way, and realizes with a start that he has been absent from the table talk for nigh onto half an hour.  In a while, he begs off for the evening, and he and his wife make their way home.

In their hour long trip, he thinks of nothing, other than what he has seen tonight.  Even months later, the image still visits him.

Captivated.

……..see https://secret-lifeof.com/2017/11/06/from-captivated-to-captivity/

picture credit to:  http://bilbaoarte.org/activities/dancer-in-the-dark-lars-von-trier-2/?lang=en

Driving dreams

When you’ve had your license for many decades, there is that innate sense of control that comes with the autonomy of being a driver.

In some of my uncomfortable dreams, I am behind the wheel.  The unpleasantness arises not from a loss of control over the vehicle, but from a sense of being directionless, lost, or not knowing the way back home.  The scene may be a narrow dirt road through the bush, winding, and with many potholes to avoid.  I’m trying to reach some unnamed, but important destination, to which I have been before.  Sometimes, I have to stop, get out, and move a fallen tree, or shoo away an animal.  After what seems a long time, the urgency grows, and so does the fear that I have taken the wrong road.

My Dream Self, the inner critic that scolds me for stupidity, says things like “You don’t recognize this path, do you?  How long are you going to spend on this foolishness?”  I respond angrily, self-righteously, “It IS the right path, I’ll show you!”  Whereupon another seeming eternity passes, and it ends after a final turn in the road, when, in front of me, there is a gigantic rock fall, or a flooded bridge.  Impossible and impassable.

Usually, this is the point of awakening.
What’s peculiar is that in recent episodes of this repeating story, and as my age advances and the body is not what it once was, I seek, through imagined strength of will, to challenge these impossible barriers.  At the rock fall, I find a fallen tree trunk and use it as a lever to topple those stones one by one into the river.  Next time, if it is the flooded bridge, I gather dead trees and lay them across the stream.

I awake with a sense of accomplishment, but also with a memory of the struggle, and I have managed to silence that critic for a time.

What all of this signifies, only Freud knows.  I have my own suspicions, but that’s for another time, and perhaps a more private place.

Conscience

In the bad place, he
Turns to the mirror.
Sees his own falseness,
A stab to the heart.

Under the microscope
Of the mind’s eye
His trembling finger is guided, and points
To spiritual wrongs committed,
As of yet unrepented.

Thievery, betrayal, cowardice, hypocrisy, false witness.
All bared to the unforgiving light.
A drowning feeling pervades.
His struggling grows more weak,
As he cries out to the one he thinks he can never touch nor find.

In the lateness of his life, he pleads that he has learned.
Yes, he has learned,
And meekly asks for guidance out of these depths,
Now that he’s seen his own mortality.

Such is the lot that falls to so many:
Regret and repentance are pushed ever further away,
As if willed to be on a slingshot of time,
Whose tension is suddenly snapped,
Releasing the shot, in all of its impossible density.
A dark star into our conscience.

image credit to:  https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2016/12/22/arrested-development-american-conscience

 

 

The future

Breathing deeply from a long brisk walk, I sit to write this.

On a very cool October day, the one before I turn 67, a young boy of about twelve approaches me on the path.  He’s a handsome kid, with red red hair and freckles, and has no qualms about making eye contact.  He smiles, begins to run.  I smile back, and I fancy I see the future in his eyes.

Oddly, what’s been brought to mind is the memory of a curious painting.  I do not know the artist or title, but it is of a mother embracing her young son, who has a discouraged expression, but, at the same time, one of hope.  She gestures up and away, with an earnest and joyful smile.  The two follow with their eyes, and the boy seems to understand that his mother is trying to show him a brighter future, and telling him not to be sad.  I do wish I had it to show you.

Older and more cynical now, “connected” with the immediacy of the horrors happening around us, listening perhaps too much to the prophets of doom (lest I become one myself), I struggle to find the extraordinary, the promising, the angelic, and the kind.
I want to, and it is there.  I know.

In the face of the red haired boy.
In the soulful eyes of a 3 year old girl, who spoke to me so much like an old soul that my heart skipped.
In the charity of some that I meet, the fleeting faces with clear and present eyes,
and in the brave hearts of those who are actively opposing, at their own risk, the specter of rising authoritarianism.

These cannot be extinguished and must, one day in the future, prevail.

picture credit:  https://storify.com/ProfKarim/envisioning-the-future-university

 

 

 

Mister BlueTooth

 

Mister Bluetooth

Feels as though he is wired to receive,
Willing or no,
The auras and vibes of those travelling through time with him.
Chance encounters that many would not mark
Shower him with ceaseless impressions.

Some souls seem born with wells of kindness.
He returns what he has of this, out of tired eyes.
Their smiles and eyes are knowing.
They bear no malice, only invitation.
There is a premonition of what they may know,
And their seeming promise.
His heart does a little leap, perhaps to Joy.

Others, with downcast countenance, pass as shadows.
Some challenge him for daring to look,
Hurling angry spears of black and dark crimson.
How comes this? (He thinks, and looks away).
What have their lives been like?
Don’t shoot me!
I cannot help but see you.
Can it be that you perceive my own dark and secret places,
And are but returning these black treasures?

Toothless days do come
When there’s no Receiving.
Maybe there are flies in his eyes.
He sees no souls, but hears only an insistent buzz.

“People stopping, staring
But I don’t see their faces
Only the shadows of their eyes”*

Empathetic or merely pathetic?  Which am I?
(Thinks Mister Bluetooth)

Picture credit  https://www.codenameone.com/blog/bluetooth-support.html

*Lyrics by Harry Nilsson