I go to see Gerald; arrive just as a previous client leaves
—another wrapped in mystery— who passes quickly by me, her face, too, completely obscured and hidden by a bright magenta silk scarf wrapped around her and only visible, her smooth dark skin. She rushes by me and departs down the hall
So I hesitate outside the door
Gerald lives not far from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the street heading up his place always shifts my mood by association
This one like many art museums I have known, the Metropolitan is possibly my one place of refuge here in the US, like a home away from home since my life growing up in the Netherlands —where every street there is like a museum —and I think this standing there of ....how I do miss those ancient streets that have kept their gabled faces like some bridge of time that connect our present time to that Middle, medieval past
A bridge
I think this just as I go to knock on his door. But first take a breath before I do
Because time.... which is relative and a concept or perspective but really—what is time.... when a memory is forever
I believe time must play out in present and exist eternally
that repeats always in the present tense
Like my diary; my dictionary.... written in present tense; these crumbs that link my present to ....
and why I had to create my secret self; my secret world.... inside me
The veiled cocoon of misleads and false turns with the secrets folded inside the patterns
—————-
When Gerald answers he does not seem at all perturbed by his previous session, despite the evident passionate state his client left in. Instead, he is relaxed and cheerfully placid,
Today he wears, with faded jeans, what seems to be a Hawaiian shirt but I notice that there are flamingos hidden all over it like some Magic Eye optical illusion. So it makes me laugh
“Oh, the shirt? Kaylee bought it for me; most people don’t notice the flamingoes ....”
Gerald is not the Hawaiian shirt type with his wiry frame and nerd glasses but then, he wears it tucked in and buttoned up so that one can almost believe he is wearing a tie, despite the jeans juxtaposed with his neat, side parted hair and clean shaven face. And yet he exudes this Buddha serenity without the need for the costume just by his calm and collected aura
And coupled too is the scent of frankincense which hangs in the air when you step into his place and seems to wrap its own kind of hypnotic spell.
He waves me in towards the kitchen
“Chai?” he asks me
“Isn’t that intense for what I am here for?” .... shoes at the door I ask; then follow him into the kitchen
“I think we both know you are going to need it,” and already he has made it i notice as he pours from a colorful tea pot into a carnelian colored porcelain cup that sits in its own unusual saucer. He hands it to me
He pours some for himself using his usual cobalt heavy mug with its asymmetrical shape, then we sit on rug piles on the floor with just one hanging paper lamp lighting the room
I blurt unable to contain it to myself anymore
“But I don’t understand, Gerald! Why is she in love with him if he has kidnapped her and worse witnessed him kill her mother? Is it Stockholm syndrome?”
No comments:
Post a Comment