video ‘gray socks’, a chat with an ex

duel not duel

a break with some nonsense between the definitions

a dictionary that begs to define; Electra’s dictionary (jm muse chronicles)

‘My life has been extraordinary
Blessed and cursed and won
Time heals, but I’m forever broken
By and by the way’*


https://youtu.be/bHR0MBF-AZc



I get up in the night to vomit from pain and sit on the floor of the shower with the water hitting me


And then lay there on the floor and think of Elan and of her pain .... and how she died, I think of her blood and of her torture ....

so much like mine —like the hours i spent in that dorm room at Bard as he beat me

and it makes me think of parallels of lives

their importance in their present meaning

 .... like the vampire pirate in whose arms she died who was there too late .... and understand too how this could leave a soul with a heavy burden of responsibility  ....I think these thoughts

as I try not to feel this

inflammation of scar tissue on spine; in all fingers/joints

pain that could be best described as

a hot iron migraine felt throughout your body, with a pulse-pounding punch administered with sadistic tenacity .... by its ever-present perpetrator that still beats

a week of illness; it is what I usually hide; especially here in my writing because I resent what it has done to me from something I never asked for but am left with its consequences .... my rage?


and  there-after for days ....once it finishes its meticulous, abusive course, it leaves me utterly ruined; like some sloth; just useless and exhausted

after these episodes I always notice that pain burns calories

but it also consumes muscle and leaves me just weak and thin

whatever brings it on is its own choice and after time, you learn its pattern; it has its signals

ironically, the best thing for my condition is extreme, vigorous exercise, but only if I am strong enough to stand

Sometimes I understand when I am deep within this personal hell .....

I know that at the center of all my madness has been this .... self.... manifested actuality

A manifested self just from what you learn to have to become to make a compromise within the self: to endure

Sometimes just from physical pain and that is itself another lesson, under fire

..... because certain levels I have learned to not feel and maybe it has made me stronger .... but .... I wonder really —is that strong? to not feel? .... unless it is the tragedy to give up feeling

and it has somehow dehumanized a certain level of my self ; that is, maybe callus .... it has caused a separation within ; pain—what it has done to my mind I can never fully say; pain has been my most familiar constant and rooted me deep within into and within myself ..... this place within

And I think about Dr. Rothschild statistics and how she said most don’t live past 20 and how I was a trail blazer on her statistical chart; a ‘miracle case’ she said, which was the only reason she took on a new case as she was retiring to devote to her studies of this—and, she was curious about my famous biological father; quick to notice my obvious resemblance to him.

So why did I survive.... and how....? My theory is —my madness. And complete disregard of normalcy. Adaptation and the survival of the fittest


If I am a masochist, I had to be in order to survive and there is a certain madness there.... this is a tiny clue that I only give away because .... I’m tired of keeping it to myself


So because I can’t withdraw into Ethan’s penthouse with one of my usual creative excuses

that I would normally find to disguise my invalidity ....

and shame.... not meant to be public to anyone but me and why i never allow people too close to see me like this and loath myself because ....now he has seen me at my worst

The night Jörn told me about the table from e-Bay, he later had told me about finding other things my sister sold, not just on e-Bay but through Christie’s —which came up in all his searches, he shows me screen shots of old transactions all from around the time of our parents deaths and .... I recognize all the items....

My mother’s jewelry, which would have put Elizabeth Taylor to shame, original oil paintings from our trips to France and Italy, marble pieces and a nineteenth century secretary and so many other things I recognize that had been in the family generations

.... and I think about this now.... how odd it was that Jörn looked at me —so

before he said,
“so there were no wills.....”

rhetorical

intentionally

to beg the question

And so I then said,
“well, she would argue that if I wasn’t considered his blood I could not claim his inheritance —but....” and I forced a laugh to say, “some of that had belonged to our mother’s mother or handed down by her father, my grandfather.”

“So she sold things that should have been yours by right?” Jörn pressed the question and I did notice a very biased note of hidden anger in his voice and then he asks me, “why didn’t you fight for any of it?”

“When were kids she kicked me in the crotch with her brand new Danish clogs and when I defended myself by punching her, I got caught by my dad and guess what happened after that? Yes, I got the belt. I was told never to lay a hand on my sister again not even to defend myself .... and that was the last time I defended myself,” I shrug and say, “you don’t really want to know .... because then you will understand how someone becomes feral and I think it isn’t exactly a nice wholesome image.”

I wish I could cut that out of me. These things. These shitty things. I wish that didn’t happen. Those things. I hate these things about me. Does it make me a better artist? It just makes me another fucked up artist

I needed to get away. from there. I want to be hidden. in these  mountains. For awhile. I still wish I could run and never stop. I know I will never be free

He says the demon is inside me

Jörn says,
“I know what ever you have so deeply buried it .... is about some kind of shame, duva.... you don’t want me to know what it is but I think I already know. But I know you think I would look at you some different way if you told me what it is.... you seem unable to.... I don’t know, maybe accept or forgive yourself or —maybe it’s more your feeling of being defiled ....”

His choice of word shocks me as he hits a nerve with sharp precision

“I think you figured out some of it, Jörn.... but not all of it. That time you said it to me .... the night, you know, with the fishnets.... you were right but that isn’t all of it....” but I stop myself and ask, “how do you know you wouldn’t think differently of me?”

I decide it’s best not to look at him at this point and keep talking,
“when we were small and she used to make me dress up as the father and play House ....at first I pretended to go along with it just because she always bullied me —so as we played her game of House with her baby dolls, the fake pots and pans and she the mom and me the dad— I came up with an idea to say I was going to go work on the car in the garage ....so, naturally, that was my way out and then I would leave and sneak away to go play with my toy car collection, but that didn’t work after awhile. It turned out since I didn’t play the way she wanted me to she ran to daddy and told on me and so I got the belt .... so I learned ....to play along....” I stop here and glance at Jörn and look away “Jörn.... but —she expected me to .... do things ....”

I don’t know how to continue. And I don’t want to. I want to stop. and wish to retrace and erase everything I have said

I take a deep breath and still without looking I plunge on

“It started when we were very young and.... there is something very deeply wrong with .... “ I shudder now and put my head into my hands and cover my face

I know he is aware of my discomfort and —without looking I can feel his

Neither of us move but he clears his throat,
“duva.... “

So I look up st him,
“so—you understand?—I mean what is behind her revenge? And.... so what if I told you that the person who left me for dead at college that night .....bragged to me that night how he’d been banging my sister too....”

I wonder if he is aware of the layers, like paint that covers up the old walls of a stage that has had plays long played out and reinvented for new scenes acted out of lies, coated over more layers, of still more layers, of hidden evils closed up inside a dictionary that begs to define

**************************************

It has been snowing a lot. It looks like winter has taken the stage as now everything is covered in white outside and it’s not seeming to go as more snow is supposed to come

He has taken to splitting wood after his morning run and sometimes I watch him from the window above from the bedroom upstairs

I worry about how he must think of me with all the chaos of my life and there is a stigma of being what I am .... but this is who I am and i cannot change who I am .... and if I am too much, so be it because I would not know how to change .... I know that he is a reasoning man; he likes to figure things out first by taking things apart and examining every detail and thinking then to use his logic to put the whole personality together, as I’m sure that is how he must work going over his top secret people on the radar portfolio cases —but in my case I suspect some parts have fallen out and long gone lost so....

I believe this is what he does as he splits wood; he works on his mental dissections. What he does when he runs. Without even realizing he does this .... I like to watch him when he is deep in thought and I suppose that is when I dissect him. I like to watch him.... it doesn’t matter what he does; he fascinates me in a way I have never known but always longed to know as an artist. Have always searched for like the dream memory and think of her pictures in the sand ....I would never tire of his face no matter how old he got

sometimes I think I must seem to him some unbelievable Candide who goes through life attracting atrocities ....because I don’t get the feeling he has encountered too manylike the like of me before and so I always fear that I overwhelm him with how deep my complicated maze does go

but then, his talent is a safe cracker

His parents will be leaving to return home soon and, strangely, I am somewhat sorry but this is a foreign concept to me that I dare not try to analyze at this time and so I think this sitting here tapping into my phone as I watch Jörn from the window .... and watch him put down the axe to take out his phone

he sends me a message!

<i want to show you something—can you come out in about fifteen minutes?>

<where?>

<come around the back behind  the garage by the shed. Give me fifteen minutes>

I check the temperature on my phone.... -4C —not as cold as the other night at least

When I go downstairs I see that his parents have gone to sleep and Andreas has shut the door of the room he’s been sleeping in

I find my boots and put on my coat, then go out through the kitchen because the door is quieter. I didn’t realize there was a shed but then, that must be where the axe is stored, I think, as a cold blast of air goes up my sleeve as I open the door. My boots sink into the snow as I walk around the garage and to the back and realize two big trees had overshadowed the shed —which is, like a double shed —like a tiny duplex house with two doors on separate sections. One that faces the back of the house and another that I only notice as I go around the back—that faces the mountains

and this is where Jörn is waiting for me, leaning against the wall

he smiles when he sees me as if he has a secret but he gestures to the sky because of the stars as he comes over to me, opening his coat to pull me inside it,

He points,
“right there is the Big Dipper—see the North Star?”

Skies and stars ....

I follow his direction and see it is visible until some clouds come and obscure

“Is this my surprise?” I ask and turn into him inside his coat looking up at his face

“No— guess what is behind this door?” and he pulls me towards it

“No idea....”

And he opens it,
“the owner is Swedish, remember? She installed a sauna —I just had to fix a few things about it before I wanted you to see it.”

“Have you known it was here all along?” I follow him inside

“Lisa said there was one here but it needed some things fixed which I did....”

It is all pale wood slats and  two long layer steps of rounded recliner areas but as I go inside with him I get the strangest chill

It is the placement of where the window is and where the wood burner is set.... and how it looks.... and reminds me of....

I look at Jörn but he moves to the fire and adjusts something

“It’s just starting to warm up,” he takes off his coat and hangs it up on a peg by the door and comes over to me, unzipping my coat and pulling it off me

“You’ve been busy!” I say as I look around, noticing a pile of neatly folded white towels ....

and placed ....

“Jörn....” I say low to myself

arranged as the sauna is..... it is exactly where the hides would have been stacked up ....in the smeden’s hut—I get another chill and look over at him as he comes back from hanging my coat

“Boots—“ he points

so I take them off as he goes back the fire and —it is like deja vu for a moment.... I see everything the way it is in my memory and I see both, together overlaid in vision ....the way he stands now before the fire as he warms up his hands, he does a motion

I watch him take off his shirt and as he stands there with his back bare in front of the fire I know ....I cannot ever doubt that I have .... “Jörn....” I whisper again as the shadows that fall into contours of the muscles of his back —flesh to life a memory the way a photo on paper emerges from chemicals, he turns now to face me,

“are you warm enough, duva?” he asks me as he opens the button of his jeans and starts to remove them, “do you like it? I’ve been getting it ready while you were ....unwell, I thought you’d like it.”

I move nearer to him and stare instead of answering because of the strange tricks of my mind and without thinking I say,

“I love —it,” and continue to stare at him as he kicks off his jeans to sit down naked

He smiles,
“come here,” and opens long arms

and it makes me think of the image of the beach with the full moon. I go over to him and his hands move over me, peeling off my sweater and jeans

“I don’t want it too get too hot, Jörn,” I say about the sauna, “I can’t be in extreme heat, you know, because of ....”

but he pulls me onto him to sit wrapped around him and fits me ....to him

“By the way, I don’t think any differently about you —but I can’t promise about the heat,” he says against my ear






*lyrics by Billy Corgan from the song ‘Muzzle’

a pirate’s prize

‘I fear that I am ordinary, just like everyone 

To lie here and die among the sorrows 

Drift among the days

‘For everything I ever said

And everything I’ve ever done is gone

And dead

‘As all things must surely have to end

And great loves will one day have to part’*

.................................................................................

Elan on the beach washes her shame in the ocean

She learned to loath herself by the man that she called father

she goes along the shore in search of moonstones

she walks up the way to the market where people sold and traded things like silk and pottery, dried herbs and root vegetables

Elan and her father traveled with a donkey because their horses were taken when the raid happened two years before

and so they walked everywhere and packed up the donkey and went by boat to travel and trade

He was thought to be a medicine man and his herbs promised cures

they would travel by season when weather allowed it and returned to familiar ports

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The first time the pirate with the vampire eyes looked at her with possession 

it was her first encounter of being valued

*”Muzzle” Billy Corgan https://youtu.be/bHR0MBF-AZc

Noir haze (edjmmusechron)

“So do you want to go back to the city?” I ask him

“Eventually—yes,” he nods with an obvious shrug, “I’m a musician, you can’t expect me to perform for sheep and you know you can’t stay in hiding forever. It’s not realistic. You will crave the city again,” he says this matter of fact with a sharp look at me

“No....” I say back “I don’t know that....” and shake my head for emphasis “....!”

but he ignores this

He says,
“.... can you really see yourself blending into the mountain range?” he asks me and gestures around us

“Why not? Trees are my favorite people,” I say

He laughs and shakes his head,
“No, I can’t see that. You say this but you are an artist and you will crave things like actual culture soon enough..... and want the city again and I mean, not necessarily the city —being —New York City.”

But I don’t want to think about it right now, it feels too much

He says,
“there are other cities.”

my attention gets sidetracked by what he says.... other cities; yes..... because

each time when I decide to just pick up and go some place

there is such a thrilling rush.....

that feeling of escape

like now, when I think of it it .....to finally finally get away .... and naturally, for me it goes to ‘no place like home’ and thoughts of running back to Amsterdam..... to
finally get away from here; far far away from what has been one very long nightmare since I arrived at Bard college

He pulls up to the house and before he moves to get out I say,

“sometimes I wonder if it is only the code that you want from me.”

He shuts the car door he has just opened without getting out and as I start to get out of the car he grabs my wrist and stops me

I wiggle free from his grip by fast reflex and get out fast and rush to the house

“Wait!” he calls after me but I run inside

“Is everything ok?” Elsa says as I rush by her

“Oh, I just —“I say but hear Jörn calling me as he walks through the front door but I say to Elsa, “—yes—fine....I’m just....!” but I keep going until I reach the stairs and rush up and shut the bedroom door kicking off my boots and tossing my coat in a mad need to be free of it. I hear him come up the stairs still calling me. I run to start the water in the bathtub and shut the bathroom door

He comes right in and he seems slightly angry

“What are you doing?”

“I’m taking a bath,” I tell him

“Why do you say that and then take off? Is this about the other thing?”


Then I hear another voice and realize it’s Andreas asking if I’m ok.

I shut off the water and sit on the ledge and call out that I’m ok and look up at Jörn

He takes a moment to watch me and leans against the sink with his arms folded then he walks out and opens the bedroom door and calls out

“Vi kommer snart nere!”


and then shuts the door again and comes back

“I know what you’re doing!” he says looking at me with sudden awareness



*from the song ‘Muzzle’ by Billy Corgan

Noir Cruise Control (edjmmusechron) 7 November 2019

It is cold —and even when we get into the car so.... I wait for him to put on the heat and shiver as I lean sideways against the side of the seat with my legs up and my knees to my chest to huddle for warmth

I ask him now about the weird thing he just said

He takes out his phone and shows me something,
“do you know what this is?”

“It looks like musical notes,” I say

“Yes, well, obviously! Look closer, duva,” he insists

“I’m dyslexic—but— I could hazard a guess it is —what—the major and the minor piano chords? I never could read music, Jörn.”

“Exactly....” he says and smiles at me, “but you are right, that is what this is.” He puts away his phone

Suddenly he says, and very casually,
“So did you miss me?”

He can be so strange but so impossibly handsome. I move over to him and angle between the steering wheel into his lap and wrap around his hips. I press myself there to him, and loosen his hair then cover his mouth with mine,
“what do you think?”

He smiles as he glances at the side rear view to see if anyone is there.... then runs his hands up the back of me to my hips and pulls me to him with a roughly accurate motion which belies what his expression does not

“You should put your seat belt on,” but he laughs and pulls me by the hips to press me into but then he sees someone in the rear view,
“actually, you should, there’s a state trooper ....” he says now

“Oh! ....Do you know it has been a year since ....” I say as I move up to move over ....but then I stop for a moment to look at him; to look .... into that den inside his eyes, “that first day ...” and watch his eyes respond with their elusive mystery

I move to the passenger seat and say,
“but you are too rational to get caught up in things like ....”

“Things like?” he asks me but he teases me

“You know—emotions..... You don’t really ever get emotional about anything —so it seems things don’t really ....” I run out of what to say

“I don’t? You think I don’t feel things?” he asks me seriously, “you think that I don’t notice you’ve been sleeping in my bed ....?”

And still he says nothing

“Jörn.... you know, I think you are like .... you’re like Spock, I think, —I mean, sometimes a girl needs ....a clear indication .... of—some sort of....” and run out of words

“So I’m Spock and my father is Yoda— what does that make you?”

“....Barbarella,” I say

“So my mother would be....?”

“Sarah Connor—“ I shrug easily as it’s a given but see he needs a hint, “the Terminater....” and I cock an imaginary machine gun. 

we both laugh but then he shrugs with a heavy sigh,

“You really are obtuse.... you know? you don’t notice ....how I have turned my life upside down ...?” he looks at me and waves his arms, “look where we are.... why are we here? Because you wanted to get away from the city —do you know what I did just to bring you here? Why? Because of something going on in your pathological past you still won’t talk about and I have not forced out of you but you are running away from something that .... “and he looks at me in a kind of tragic way.

What is he thinking? He takes my chin in his hand thoughtfully and then drops his hand and looks suddenly away “.... which, at this point, you have to realize that.... the demon is inside you,” he says

“Yes. Well, whatever. Dr. Freud ....be that as it may.... Jörn, still.... sometimes a girl needs a more obvious sign.”

“My opera ....you know it’s because of ....we’ve talked about this.... ” he says and looks at me, “and the fact that my parents have accepted that Lisa and I are done.”

Such a brave statement and a comfortable commitment

I become aware of more than one conversation happening at the same time.

But then he asks me,

“Do you still want to know what I was doing in New Jersey?”

“If you want to tell me.”

“I found the table that went to the safe —your sister sold it on e-Bay for eight hundred dollars back in 2003. Wasn’t that the year after your parents died? They died six weeks apart, right?”

“Hmmm....” I put on my seatbelt

“And there were no wills....?” He asks me

but I take that as rhetorical rather than decide to open that conversation

and now ask, “the table to the code ....?” and look at him

He says,
“The table with the code ....key  —to the safe with the code —lock,” he says

“What does that mean?” I ask him

“It means ....” he starts the car and turns in the seat to back out, “I need you to remember how to play that piece you won that award for.”

Vampire encrypt

“My life has been empty, 

my life has been untrue


And does she really know, who I really am?


Does she really know me at last?

And are you just like me?


Dead eyes, 

are you just like me?

Her eyes, her eyes 

were as vacant as the seas, yeah

Dead eyes, 

Dead eyes, 

are you just like me?”

— ‘By Starlight’ lyrics by Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins album “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”

https://youtu.be/GYJfzw6gZx8

*************************************************************

as I wait for him at the airport I watch the sky .... and realize

looking up at the setting sun

I had the dream again ....last night

it was the one again where at first I don’t see my foot prints in the sand as I move across the shore

..... and I move like gossamer but this time, I see an image of a field of burning crosses and see the silent screams of dead empty skulls swinging from trees

I hear his music to the opera in my dream


And then I see him again for the first time 

the day at the market....like a moment eternally frozen in time

the way the wind swept back his hair, like shimmered gold against the beach of sand as he stood there at the market with his bag of swords,

the slate gray of his eyes of his eyes of possession that blended with the blue of the sea and the sky

and then it is another scene with the smeden on the beach through her eyes.... a ritual or ceremony

under a full moon

in the dream I walk around him on the wet sand and draw a circle around us and kneel before him and before I move to kiss his body, I hold up the moonstone and scry into the white-blue moonstone cabochon

and hear the foreign words spoken from my lips say,

“am byth....” as he repeats the words with me ....

and then I see too that.....

he is so young really....too young to look so old

 ....his eyes, like that of a vampire who lost his soul—sucked out by life—eyes of such wild beauty and hidden fragility that only a dove could actually see

and I become aware, as I have the dream, of this warrior’s heavy sense responsibility; of that life and its great burden on his soul, to trade for an artist’s soul and found myself wondering how he took it on and what or how it served his life’s need, if it kept his soul in shackles and defeated his greater purpose; the warlord; a prisoner of a life, was that why he was given the chance to try again and does the burden remain because it has become a comfort of baggage and all that he knows?

***************************************
It has gone quite chill in the mountains and there is sleet on the road on the way to the airport


Jörn is easy to spot from a distance, as he stands out tallest among the exiting passengers with his gold blond hair pulled back and carrying his cello. He wears a long, heavy, trench coat over a gray turtleneck with darker gray flannels.


He smells good when I reach up to him and kiss his neck; like wood and citrus. He fills my head and .... I catch my fingers into his hair to prolong the embrace.

it is always such a rush to see him and it occurs to me it is going on one year since the first day I wound up in his living room to retrieve my mail

“So what were you doing New Jersey?” I ask against his ear stretched on toes to reach him, “and what were you saying about a table and e-Bay?”

“I’ll tell you on the way,” he says and then, enigmatically, he says, “hidden keys, notes, codes, chords ....”