(edited/altered again*) Part 2 next session at Gerald’s

“He signed a consent for me,” Gerald clears his throat.

“What—does—that—mean?” I ask expecting anything at this point— perhaps the ceiling to open up and Odin to come flying in

I just hold my breath

He sets down his mug and pulls himself into a full yoga pose; even his hands and fingers; he closes his eyes

He takes a few deep breaths and with his eyes closed he breaths out and says in exhale,
“we taped our last session. He wants you to hear it.”

Why do I shudder in fear?

I watch Gerald reach for his phone to find the voice memo— 

I suddenly ask now,

“How many times has he come to see you?” I ask this as I reach for the chai needing the strength suddenly “how often does he come? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Gerald looks at me in this way; you know.... like the cat who swallows the canary

and looks awkward

I sigh,
“well he admitted it to me that he has come to see you .... Gerald, you can’t say? Client/professional-confidentiality?”


“Where do you want to start?” Gerald asks me, adjusting his sitting position, “why don’t we just start the recording?”

••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Jörn’s voice fills the room.....

Recording: it always begins the same way, it is a kind of howling .... it howls— and rings in the air with a hammering and echoes like a chorus ....

like Carmina Burana but not as nice.... and more male vocals—mixed even with mine.

Some times I catch myself waking up with the sound in my lungs .... that’s when I get up to play.....

it’s become worse since ..... since meeting her.... min duva.....

seeing her eyes that day in the lobby..... like a turtle dove.... her eyes, those colors of the feathers and like my dream from that same night....

she tells me she dreams in color too.... I know from the other dreams.... all the blood

All the blood on my hands.... it is smeared like across my eyes, pours from my sweat into my eyes.... smeared like a giant movie screen across the wide battlefields, the rocks, the earth.... the mud..... even the ice and slush .....

this dream has always been a part of my life but I have never been able to tell anyone because..... this won’t make sense but— I feel guilty.... for something.... for things..... as though I need to —suffer somehow; martyr or do a kind of penance which I cannot explain because I’m not religious..... but I always get some all consuming heavy weight of guilt for —something— which.... I always have felt

and has made me often feel this need to sacrifice my own needs.... my own dreams and especially about happiness and part of why I felt this obligation to .... do the government work; this shame this need to give back something .... she’s told you, I assume? About my secret second job? I know since we signed the paper there that we have trust about confidentiality—and I know how to find you [here Jörn laughs and you can hear Gerald’s laugh too]....

when I saw her in the dream back in October, when these new dreams started to surface.... yes the colors.... with the dark blue robes and the red hair—I remembered something.... I was reminded of another dream or maybe really it is part of the whole dream—which isn’t really a dream —is it?

You know I never believed in any of this about reincarnation—not that I disbelieved either, I just didn’t really like thinking about that kind of thinking....

but there is as an older dream. Which is darker and what I was just describing to you.... where there is slaughter .... gruesome and —sickening—along with this a prevailing sick smell that you taste at the back of the throat— and mixed with it a wild high.... a kind of euphoric madness that I find .... where I feel most of the center of this guilt .... which often forces me to wake up.... why I need my music to .... release this

And ..... well.... [heavy sigh....]

In this dream I see another warrior torturing a woman.... and when I look around myself and see heavy bags of plunder and dead children .....and this I mostly find it hurts to look at in the dreams.... I think it must be about— or connected to.... his own family, his own losses.... I don’t know—is it me? Who then is it? But I feel it. Know it. Or is it more that I can’t deny it. That I wish I could. I know from the emotions that I am responsible for what I witness ....the tortured woman .... the mother to the girl.... she wears dark blue robes like her and has the red hair and as I see her I always hear someone screaming for her mother.... and it hurts in here.... in my pulse— in my beating heart.... I hear the sound of the girl’s voice screaming.... as I watch the torture of the woman being slowly slaughtered and cannot watch it any longer with the sound of her screams ....and this is why it seems—I have to stop it.... and do with one stab into her .... to give her peace..... but I know it is my fault somehow.... and then I see a dark blue image running away into the trees..... in the distance

(*no doubt will be edited again still—the perils of writing while hiking & in public places; dictionary: excuse this maniac’s approach to a writer’s craft)

Shifting props behind scenes in a dictionary; a Tootsie kind of nightmare day

and so, because the session with Gerald is still too heavy to write about yet —you will have to forgive me, dictionary, if I opt to avoid

    upon leaving Gerald’s

but then, it becomes a Tootsie (the film) kind of day bumping into Nigel after

How he says that Jörn might be something vomited from Hell....? is that how he said it—?

I half don’t hear nor understand anything Nigel says after that. Maybe I short circuit more easily than the average person

I have a cap on how much my emotions can take before I need to run for cover

I say at such point,
“I must go,” to him

Nigel reaches for me as I get up from the table and throw my bag on to go

“I’m just worried about you,” he says to me

“Well—gosh, I don’t know what to say about that....” and I look right at him. I no longer see his lighthouse somehow though ... I mean I think I have a bad habit of self delusion—especially about men; I give them far too much credit and in hindsight I always realize I seem to fill in my fiction where they lack and credit it all not to myself

“Listen, I am sorry about how it went down between us,” I apologize because I have a moment of feeling guilt but I add, “maybe you hoped for something I’m not wired for—I don’t mind that you may be bisexual as so was I once but I was always monogamous and to simplify this for you, Nigel....” I study his eyes now that have lost their power over me and, yes, there is a sadness about this, to be sure, but not when you realize it was never based on a truth, “it’s not that I cannot be broad minded about being capable of having an open relationship but— well, you never asked me nor considered and still, as I’d have said no, anyway— it is not physically possible for me to be close to someone intimately once I don’t trust them. I just am not equipped that way....”

He stares back at me and after this moment when I see his eyes go red I decide I have to go

“But I—“ he begins

“No!” because I can feel what he’s about to say and actually run now for the door out of Starbucks only he runs after me outside and he says it anyway as I am rushing away from him

“I love you,” he says this

I cover my ears and say,
“No-no-no, stop! Please! You made a choice—do not make me the bad guy!”

“Don’t you think your Viking might just be rebound?”

“Please ....stop calling him that. He’s a musician, he’s not a fucking Viking—and you know nothing about our relationship, you have no business even going there, ok?”

“You know— I saw him leave your apartment building the other day and meet up with a woman,” Nigel tells me

“What? Have you been stalking me, Nigel? You know.... let me go, I need to go—I’ve had such a day, do you mind—?”

He grabs my hand and pulls at my phone that I have my fingers wrapped around and he says,
“please un-block me!” and he grabs my phone

I look down the street wanting to be gone from here.... I think that is the only way he’ll let me go so I say,
“Ok, fine,” and pull my phone from him. I open him in contacts and unblock him. I show him this now. Then I send him a text to prove it. I do a smile—

:)

I look at him,
“Ok?”

“Will you message me later?” he asks me

....?

I look at him and then again down the street. Later.... ? how long is later, I wonder

I sigh heavily and say,
“Ok, listen, I have some things I want to ask you about DNA memory and, how ‘bout I try and text you tomorrow?”” Yeah? Ok—so, yeah—ok?”

I dread the hug but then he does it

and then I start to run down the street and lose myself in the crowds

but I still hear him calling after me

It is after a few streets of weaving in and out of in order to feel free of him that I finally take a deep breath and slowly head back to the apartment building but finding myself taking the long way back

It is some gear shifting when I realize I have to face the Swedish chorus and....

Jörn which after everything

still, I arrive at the apartment building far quicker than I had expected to and find myself in the lobby standing by the postal boxes and staring at the very spot I saw Jörn for the very first time. I don’t know why but I am somehow frozen to stand there

It is awhile before I realize he is suddenly standing there. He makes me jump in fright

“What are you doing?” he asks me and comes over to me

“How long have you been there?” I ask him

“How long—? I just stepped out of the elevator and I saw you—what’s wrong?—where have you been? I sent you a text,” he says

I take out my phone as I had thrown it into my bag which must have muffled the sound, but the text messages opens up to my last :) to Nigel

I nervously cover it but he doesn’t notice and then I open to his

It simply says: where are you? Im starting to worry

Which makes me think of what Nigel said before. And the other thing he said. What woman?

I look up at him

He reads my eyes,
“what?” he asks

“I went to see Gerald,” I say through all the static going on

But then his phone does his mother’s operatic “Oooooh!!!!” alert tone that makes us both jump

He looks at his phone,
“Come,” he says pulling me back outside

“Where?”

“Mama.... I—“ still he drags me along skipping the necessity of explanation or invitation

“Where are we going?” I ask

and then we are walking to the corner convenience store

I look up at him and then at my wrist in his hand,
“sometimes I think you must must confuse me with your daughter!”

He lets go my wrist,
“yes, it must be the height thing, förlåt mig—I’m sorry,” and adds “actually, she’s taller than you but you are about the height she was at eleven so, you could be right.”

I realize we are here to do some grocery shopping as he’s methodically grabbing things

“Didn’t you say your parents are leaving soon?” I ask because I’m noticing that he is choosing items by the dozen or such that his mother likes; cinnamon buns, a few bags of split peas, a jar of herring and knäckebröd

He gives me a guilty look and shrugs,
“well—hmm.... as it turns out....”

“Oh no, what....?”

He nods,
“they are going to be here a bit longer....do you need anything? I don’t think you have been eating, you want ice cream?” he asks me

“Ice cream?”

I hand him a half gallon of milk

“Oh, that was the other thing, get the next size, Andreas goes through this.”

Maybe I hand over the gallon a little too hard as I get him in the stomach

We go up to pay

“Anything else?” he asks me partially sarcastic as he asks, “some Loko maybe?”

I decide to take it as a suggestion and go get some

We go up to pay and as the cashier asks if that’s all Jörn asks,
“do you have any straws?”

“We sell the reusable stainless steel ones,” he tells Jörn

“Perfect,” Jörn pays and hands it to me

Stockholm syndrome/Part 1 of the next Gerald session

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?”

(and again re-edited) phoenix, dictionary & mirror

~Each time I burn the dictionary it is always my true Agamemnon that recalls me .... from search engines from the Internet. He is the only one who has always had the power to remind me of who I really am and why I search my reflection for definition~

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

Back at the rooftop 

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

I can’t breathe because something is pressing the air from my lungs until it hurts and startled awake, still unable to breathe, I hear Jörn’s shout and realize I’m still on the rooftop in the sauna. I hear footsteps running and watch Jörn chasing someone across the rooftop and run in the direction of this but lose sight of them

I reach the end where the building ledge has a kind of wall, and here is where I see Jörn sat on the ledge

“What are you doing!?” I ask in horror because it looks like he’s going to jump

but then I see the other figure who he had been chasing jump from one ledge to the next building! I hear a loud, shrill scream. It is awhile before I realize it came from me

I watch Jörn on the phone shouting at someone as we watch the person running

After he ends the call he throws his tuxedo jacket around me and as it still has his body heat it instantly warms

“Who was that?” I ask him

But now his phone rings. He answers and says,
“Jasper?” And then, “you got him?” he let’s out s deep breath and his Nordic eyes pierce me, “they have him in police custody.”

I feel my head and face drain as I ask,
“ohhh no— do I have to go down to make a statement now?”

He ends the call,
“no, we’re just saying he was trespassing and Jasper is acting as the eye witness. But evidently we need to step up the security of the penthouse.... as well as the entire building. Let me see you in the light—are you all right?”

No

Especially now that he mentions this

“Let’s go back to my place,” he says

Only I don’t want to face the Greek chorus of his family

“No! Please! I can’t face everyone right now— oh my God, Jörn—this is now twice in one day—do you want to go for your encores now?”

“What?”

“Go take your bows and encores?”

“What are you talking about?”

“How could you just act like everything is fine and expect me to waltz around pretending that it’s ok to have death threats?”

“What are you saying? Calm down, you’re hyperventilating—you have to try and breathe slowly —“

“No! How do I know you are not in on this?”

“Let’s go in, you’re shivering,” he tells me

“No, I don’t want to, Jörn!”

He leads me back to the sauna instead.

At first he says nothing and waits for me to start breathing normally and when I do he comes over to me and sits down beside me

“Do you really think I don’t care about your death threats? I just sprinted across the rooftop because I was after someone trying to kill you!”

“You yelled at me for the Loko,” I tell him

“I did not yell at you,” he corrects me

“You —well—I mean, you acted like I should be fine about what happened at the park and then you were pissed at me because I had one little drink.”

He laughs at me, and repeats
“one little drink.”

That is all he says about that.

So I look at him to read his eyes and at first they are filled with humor until it gives way to concern,
“it was only because we had the performance to go to; there was no time to do anything else—what? You are angry at me for not blowing off the performance after hours of preparing for it? You believe I’m an asshole because I am able to separate myself from emotions and behave professionally when I must?”

“Is that what you call it?” I ask

“What would you call it? Do you really not trust me all of a sudden? Or— is it something else?”

Finally I admit,
“I called Gerald before.... he told me you have been to see him several times....”

Here Jörn scratches his head nervously and looks away; I stare at the strange shadows cast on his face. He folds his arms across his chest and leans against the wall of the sauna and uses his foot to kick shut the sauna door as a sudden gust of rain showers in

He turns his head to study me

“Yes,” he says

He says this with the same gravity as one in confession

Only it is his eyes that stop me from whatever I may have continued to say. Or even think

Instead my frame of mind is derailed from those tracks by the haunted expression in his eyes

misbegotten celves found in ruins

What gets lost between the lines

~behind the scenes; i bury myself and words between.... I am so shipwrecked—this is an aside of loss; lost; there is only Electra~



“Go on, take everything, take everything, I want you to! Go on, take everything, take everything! I dare you to!”*—Courtney Love


I used to say: I believe in triumph not survival


I still believe that but I have become so much more jaded by this world weary journey upon this spiked path

I recognize the anger but not the face it claimed

with sharpened teeth and claws

but I keep it to myself

as the tanks run me over; angel means messenger, not saint and this uniform never fit me right

I’m just too wild at heart

* “Violet” Courtney Love song (Hole)

Hidden in words; Electra’s dictionary

Safety in obscurity


“I won’t come out, you must come in. To me. Into my womb-garden where I peer out. Where I can construct a universe within the skull, to rival the real.”—Jim Morrison



I sneak away to the penthouse roof to get some air.... I get drizzled on

it seems the rain will never stop

it has been for days

And yet, no mention of lightening and thunderstorms were reported in New York —
which is quite strange considering what happened at the theatre when we lost power

.... and so his family don’t notice when I leave and go through the passage to the penthouse where I walk around the hallways in the dark at first. Watch the lights come from outside, from a city that never sleeps .... wander the halls

It also seems Jörn’s family never gets tired, even after an evening of endless speeches and Jörn’s musical debut of his piece which everyone took a part of. I think the excitement will keep them up until the sun rises

I never noticed the penthouse had a patio — because it is actually more than a rooftop....

.... so I look around

because it has been winter for so long and then the rain

Ilya had mentioned something about the snow people who come to haul away snow when too much covers the outdoor area. It seemed like such an extravagant and preposterous notion....

how do they get it from the top floor roof of the penthouse to downstairs? And where do they take the piles of snow before it all melts?

So I picture a man in a dump truck swimming in the driver’s seat as he waits at a red light

I am still barefoot but at least now wearing jeans and a t-shirt instead of the see-through shower curtain at the performance.... it has begun to occur to me that the candles probably exposed even more of me by their glow and shadows than had the spotlights been working....

at least my face was obscured in the dark and hopefully well hidden so that I could claim it could have been anyone;

anonymous

It was this thought that made me need to remove from them and other worries connected to what happened before

The “patio” —it turns out—is the entire roof top....I wonder if it has a pool when I discover something that looks like a sauna

I open the door and go in. Yes it is a sauna. It still has the sweet scent of the wood and something comfortable to recline on;

which I do.... because i want to clear my head and

there is something to be said for looking out a sauna door to the Manhattan skyline from up here .... as wet breezes blow rain in like sharp needles

I decide, laying here, that I want to make the entire roof my gym

even as I know it is unlikely that anyone would agree with me but .... maybe they won’t notice

maybe a yoga garden

Should I be thinking about the death threat?

Only I have and —constantly since it happened. Frantically

I don’t understand how Jörn can be so blasé about my death threat

eclipsed by his opera

I don’t think I am angry at him for that but —maybe I am

and how do I feel about that.... that he’s narcissistic?

And how do I feel about that? Do I dare analyze him? Dissect his personality flaws

How much do I really know about him? Yes, at moments I feel like I know him better than myself but then he.... does something that reminds me that in many ways we are still total strangers. How much do I really know him?

And I wonder if I should be scared of him, how much like the smeden is he? I have thought about the dream of him with Elan’s mother; when he killed her—how the dream was not seen from her eyes, how it was strangely set in a kind of shadow and seemed different than the other dreams almost like it was not my own

like it was somebody else’s dream

It makes me think and wonder that the mystery surrounding Jörn .... should be something I should factor in the whole because I do sense he is not telling me things.... many things


I think I search for ghost wisdom and tempt any spirits who would dare to have a conversation with me tonight

the night at the opera

Vampire waltz reprise 

It is Josef who finds us outside his apartment door

“I heard the knock,” Josef says  from the doorway “is everything all right?”

“She’s.... “ Jörn looks awkward as I start to slide down the wall

he reaches for me and tries to casually lift me back up

and suddenly swings me up off the floor, “she fell—and....hurt her ankle,”

Which is.... true

He carries me in now, walking past his father, as I hear them still rehearsing at the piano; Elsa and Andreas

“Oh my god! What’s happened?” It is Elsa and I find, even under the Loko influence —her sudden concern ....must be foreboding, as it is strangely out of character....

 coupled with remembering Jörn’s mentioning her scrutiny and ....

find the only recourse I can decide on is cowardice as my best policy here

and so turn my face into Jörn’s hoodie, faking the act but actually hiding from her

“Her ankle,” Josef says

“Soak it!” Elsa says

“Can you make coffee?” Jörn asks her

“Coffee?”

“Kaffe,” Jörn says

“Jag vet coffee! You should put her in the tub immediately— oh, yes coffee is good for pain , you are right, Jörn—I’ll go make coffee. Andreas!!”

We hear her say,
“Andreas, gör kaffet!”

so as I wonder about her friendly concern

Jörn says,
“she’s told everyone that you and I are going to waltz as part of tonight’s presentation ....” he shoulders shut his bedroom door


I must have passed out from the shock

because a shock of cold makes me wake up screaming —and naked and sat somewhat on the floor of the marble shower stall

“Stand up,” Jörn says pulling me up

So at this appropriate moment I vomit —mostly all over him

.... the neon green is alarming but as the Loko is all I consumed today, only alarming for its pigmented perseverance —but for its visual affects, I don’t think Jörn is as fascinated


I feel him grab hold of my skull through my hair and turn the water back on and scrub me with too much enthusiasm

.... only it feels good

“I need you to be sober,” he tells me as he washes my hair

I say,
“I’m sorry....” a few minutes go by in silence

Then I say,
“Jörn, why were you at the park?” I look up at him

We stare at each other. Just our eyes. The water comes down on both of us as I look into that Nordic blue

that has the power to enslave me and I think this with a sense of fear and watch his pale lashes blink the water

but he does not look away. He stares deep inside and within me. He shakes his head and holds my face in his hands. But then he takes his index finger and as he stares he traces the outline of my eye and stares so deep inside. He holds my face, his eyes become red around the blue

Finally he sighs deeply

“I don’t know—and that is the truth.”

“You said.... what did you say?” but my head is still sluggish ....”yes, I remember—you said you got a call....!”

I wait and stare at him. Watch his eyes. Search for what he is still afraid to say

Only.... it is something else I find inside them

He says,
“I did get a call but—it was random. It was Tony Parker from Lincoln Center and I don’t know why but his name made me think of ‘Park’ and I had this feeling you might be in trouble or something.... I just....it’s .... it was a feeling. I knew that’s where you went somehow.... and you know....this is not the first time something like this has happened —lately .... it’s very strange....I mean it is only about you.... I’ve never experienced this before about someone.... I don’t know why but I —I seem to feel it if you are in some kind of trouble....I think this is what this dream was....”

The dream....

Because I had not expected him to say this, it has the strange affect of sobering me up. Slightly.

I become silent as I wonder about this.

He dresses me like I am his mannequin and does my make up; he makes me sit still on his bureau turning my head this way and then that way. He puts dark lipstick on me. Only he has to do it over more than once. Because each time he puts his mouth on me

he says,
“you could have devoured the whole French court with this mouth,” and kisses me getting lipstick on him

“You were teasing about the waltz, right?” I ask

“No,” he says

but then his mother knocks on his door and we both jump



I had not really thought beyond Jörn playing his music on a stage and in front of the audience.... with his family

like the dreams that start off from the balcony and I am watching him on stage

I had not considered it beyond this. That it should be his night

Hiw did I get involved?

But now I think of this.... I think of the hours he spends engrossed in the music. Every detail. How he goes back over the notes again and again. How you can hear his thoughts if you understand his notes—would it not be thrilling to be part of his creation as I’d seen it’s germination?

I only thought tonight that I would see that

The way he loses himself and becomes his piece

   I think this is what it is about him that I get lost in and ....it is only there when he forgets to be self conscious

because he is then in his real space. Like the smeden at his forge. This is the den inside

His father mentioned the artist in Jörn and I think about this and say,
“why are we doing all this?”

“It’s for the commemoration; he was a good friend to our family and —considered a genius in our culture,” he tells me, and then points to the clock to remind me to hurry

“Oh sorry, no, I meant why does anyone do their art.... do you wonder about that?”

“Min duva, here, drink more coffee,” he points seriously at the espresso cup. He says, “this isn’t the time for a Kafka conversation, maybe let’s try a quick turn—put the shoes on, “ and then he swings into a quick dance practice

From the doorway Josef says,
“I think she should do it barefoot. Isn’t that how it was written in her diary?”

“You mean her blog,” Jörn corrects him

“He knows about that?” Of course I am appalled

“Yes,” Josef smiles at me with a suggestion of wickedness

“Oh no,” I say

Josef says,
“it would work better with the music and that ‘gamine’ about her.”

“Gamine?” I repeat horrified in a loud whisper to myself because I want to protest that

“No, I think I mean ‘fey’, after all the piece is called ‘den lilla duvan’ —I like her costume!”

Only it’s not. It is only the chemise for under the dress and as Jörn explains he stops and shrugs and says the rest in..... svenska

it seems no one considers my creative in put on the matter and the manic rush for the theatre intimidates me to silence

At least I’m glad we go in separate cars. I don’t think I could have survived the ride otherwise.

At last minute as we are about to head down, Elsa stops me and says,
“Oh you are almost naked; you must be cold; come here and let me put this on you.”

Of course, it is the opera coat!

....at this point, I think I am quite at a loss over understanding any of this....


But it takes almost all evening for the performance part to happen. The first hour is mostly speeches with video footage of —the genius opera person they are commemorating. I should know who he is— it is terrible I don’t, I know, but .... lately I have been too preoccupied with life to look him up and so— I enter into all this quite cold and defenseless


Josef comes over to us and speaks in English for my benefit,
“it’s going to be another hour or so before we go up,” he shrugs and smiles at me and studies me a moment. In English he says to Jörn, “when your mother begins the Flight of the Dove part I thought it might have more impact if— Duvan.... were below her feet on the floor bent in half like Wavegirl....”

Wavegirl? Flight of the dove.....

I find that I am dizzy with the impact of ....being overwhelmed by waves

And all the speeches have been in Swedish

I sit there wrapped in his world

I think of the dreams/the prehistoric memories .... and the incessant crashing sea; the ship; the blood and the frozen land and—of course, the smeden and I get lost in thoughts

.... as we wait there

 I think that night; I think of him that night.... the first he played it all the way through— that first time I time heard it—

Because before it was only parts he kept playing.... those times I woke up there in his bedroom from dreams ....as he always left the bedroom door open..... and how this music would come to me and enter in dreams and then I would wake up to watch the shadows of him on the wall ....seeing him slamming hard the keys, the ferocity of his movements

how madly he moved with the music .... and his hair flung wild about

I think again what I just heard; The Flight of the Dove.... and then think, min lilla duva.... and

I find .... this emotion too much—it is

is so unfamiliar to me

            and

it makes me panic

I stand up and walk to a window. But it is not the kind that opens. So I walk to another area apart from all the commotion. It leads down a long carpeted corridor

Why am I doing this? How did I get caught up in this vaudeville act?

I walk, still in my shoes, and pace and try to get lost

It allows me to step away in thought. When I pace back the third time he is standing there at the end. He is dressed with the long Fred Astaire tails; the full tuxedo which seems like tonight’s uniform among the outwardly male

There is that sense, because of how he’s dressed— of time away from time

This could be any time

This could be a dream

He could be a beast .... only I am drawn to his eyes

and the look in his eyes.... I have never known such eyes; how thoroughly they possess my soul absolutely; I have never seen such beauty; his eyes

“Come with me,” he says and reaches for my hand

We go down an elevator and into an area draped off. At the center is a piano and he walks me over to it

“Sit,” he says as he sits down to play

He does not hesitate, but begins immediately. He pounds the keys as though releasing a rage

But then stops immediately and suddenly turns around with his back to the keys; he lays against them with a heavy sigh

He says,
“awhile ago you spoke of an artist’s need for expression—or was it self expression? ....to do it for the sake of the passion to express it— not for the praise nor to get acceptance.... but because it had to ....exist—I had to write it. I think you understand this the same way, min duva, I don’t know why, it is just the need to. Because in the creating of it I don’t really care about approval because it breathes on its own; it already is— all I do is compose it into sound.... and yet.... we’re here for me to share it as artists , it is what we do, isn’t it.... and here I invite my work, essentially to be criticized .... and I think it seems to contradict the purpose of why it ever came about. It is something personal. From somewhere personal to me. This was simply something from somewhere deep inside me and.... should it resonate ....?” he speaks vaguely and with reserve

only, yes, of course, I do understand this and even more, and I hear through his words. I feel it; the way he lays there as he tells me this and the expression of his fingers in repose that just lay across those keys, they still are at their instrument

I touch his fingers; there is  a kind of magic to how he creates

He looks back at me,
“all my life I have been trying to write my symphony; my opus and in these few months since that day ....it created itself for me,” he looks at me when he tells me this —such unreadable eyes; such stormy eyes of enchantment and so much mystery

I walk to the window and look outside. It’s raining and now I find I especially long for the opera coat that now hangs at the coat check; it is freezing in this building

I cross my arms over my chest as the champagne silk and chiffon chemise hides nothing, and because I am nervous I have to pace about the room

“I don’t want to do this,” I tell him

He says,
“why don’t we do it the way we did the first time?”

I look at him

He says,
“stand on my feet....”

His idea gives me a sense of relief and he smiles when he sees this,
“I’ll carry you through the turns....”

I take a deep breath and then look at him and nod

“I want you to do this. Do this for me,” he says

He motions with his hand to come to him and when I walk over he pulls me to sit wrapped around him but then

Josef texts Jörn— our turn is up and, sadly, I start to feel the Loko returning on me in the elevator up I get nauseated

When we reach the stage area it gets far worse

“You all right?” Jörn asks me

“So many lights?” I hang back flooded now with terror as I watch in a daze Andreas and Josef setting up

And at first I think it’s my stomach when thunder rolls and shakes the building; there is a storm outside. The lights flicker.

Still the show must go on so, he stands next to me as we watch people move about on the platform plugging in microphones

he says something under his breath with a restrained note of deep aggravation

it sounds like a curse but I can only guess what it means

“What?” I ask

He seems irritated as he looks down at me; eyes bolt electric that could freeze fire

“I said no sound equipment!” he does the curse again

The sick feeling I’m having seems rebounded and part of it, mercifully is, because there is still some Loko impairing me which no doubt is the only reason I’m doing this

I think

as we hide behind the curtain

It starts like I am Wavegirl from my painting as per Josef as he apparently got the idea from me;

I’ve postponed the horror over thinking about the knowledge Jörn’s father reads my often sordid minded words

Josef tells me to go into the forward bent position we practiced before

like a Swan Lake ballerina and, although I am still flexible, well maybe not as much as my ballerina days but still.... why am I doing this, I wonder....? but then I think about ....

how much this is a part of him but also....

because of how the dreams seemed partly to have created this

So as we hide behind the curtain before it goes to rise, everyone stays still except Josef who begins to to pound the keys as the curtain rises

Maybe it’s only me who hides

Elsa’s voice echoes with ear splitting vibratos and dies out sudden with the cello Andreas plays


But then there is a loud thunderbolt outside that happens as if timed perfectly on cue and then all the lights go out!

My first thought was relief because I am thinking I’ve gotten out of this public torture only I underestimated the level of Jörn’s family’s professionalism .... Elsa keeps singing and the piano and cello continue even in the dark and only after a moment’s hesitation

Somebody comes lighting candles all over the stage and Jörn says to me in a whisper,
“rise— follow me like the way we did this before.”

It is the shroud of darkness and the strange haunting notes of his music that makes me forget there are people there;

I think I only noticed him ....looking at him with his eyes focused on me as we move together in pace with the mad notes we are somewhere else

we hear the notes now played by his father as we waltz now to them

their strange haunting that kept him up those nights he composed them for hours

and remember the night he first shared this with me; wrapped around him at his piano and the way he played the recorded overdubs, standing up with me still wrapped around him as we started to dance that night

He says in a whisper against my ear at a turn,
“I could not have planned it better....” and as another flash of lightening reflect off the white of his teeth, he grins

prequel to Vampire Waltz reprise (Going Loko) (of the JM muse chronicles)edited

~even tragedy needs some comic relief~

As Jörn drives I take out my phone and text Gerald;

Text to Gerald: I need to stop by to see you

Jörn pulls into a parking garage and looks at me,

“are you all right?”

“How did you know I went to Central Park?” I ask him

He turns his profile to me. I see he grinds his teeth; watch his jaw flex and knot as he looks out the windshield and steers the van around a corner to move up a ramp

“Were you following me?” I ask him

But then I hear part of the conversation behind me of the two men questioning the guy

He says,
“I swear I don’t know who he was!”

“I think he’s telling the truth,” Jörn calls back to them and says, “I was watching on the surveillance camera at the Starbucks and they know him in there, according to Jasper they back up his story.”

“Who’s Jasper?” I ask

Jörn gives me an unreadable look and parks the van. He gets out and walks around to the passenger side then opens it. He glances to the back of the van then at me and gestures with his head to get of the van.

I slide down the side and he shuts the door

He says,
“Come, let’s go around the corner to get water, you thirsty?”

But he does not wait for my reply. He takes my wrist and starts to walk me/pull me up the ramp out of the parking garage,
“Are you all right, min lilla duva?—how’s your ankle? Can you walk on it now?”

“It’s better, I think,” I say as we step out ....how am I.... ?? oh just slightly freaked out, no big deal.... as he drags me up the street as another anxiety attack is inevitably hitting me. I begin to hyperventilate

He waits until we have nearly cleared the corner and says,
“No, I was not following you, I got a call—shit, what time is it?” he looks at his watch. Again, I watch him grind his teeth, “shit, we cannot be late for the performance! Mama would string me up by my toes—shit-shit!” and does not finish this explanation, no, he just leaves me hanging and he starts to tug me along urgently to the store. I mean in the scheme of things it is good to see how well he has his concerns prioritized; he dreads his mother’s anger over some death threatening mugger

He takes out his phone to make a call and then suddenly looks at me as if he forgot I was there

He digs into his pocket for his wallet and takes out some money which he presses into my hand,
“can you get me a water?— and buy something for yourself,” he says before he says into the phone, “Pappa!”

Get him a water....

I go to the cold beverages and find the water. I only get one for him. No, for me, on impulse, I grab a Four Loko Black —why?because I am attracted to the color of the can? Yes but mostly it’s the 14% alcohol proof printed on the label

I bring both up to pay and as I wait in line, I watch Jörn standing by the door entrance having a Swedish conversation  on his phone with his father as if expostulating with heated, emphatic words. Then I hear Gerald’s text reply come and I reach to look onto my phone screen

His text: Did Jörn tell you about his dream the other night? Is that what this is about?

There is just one person in front of me now and I text back: what dream? When?

I watch the dots of him begin to reply. I keep watching. I start to get more anxious

The person at the register shouts at me because I don’t notice it’s my turn. I go up

“ID....” the guy asks me

“Are you serious?” I shake my head but start searching for my license

“We ask everybody,” he says

“Do not— they never ax me....ax everybody my ass, I come in here every day and they done never ax me....” some lady behind me says

I find my ID

The guy takes it and looks at it skeptically and turns it over looking at it

“Here’s twenty,” I say and hand him the money Jörn just gave me

“Where’s this from?” the guy looks at it like it’s a counterfeit

“It’s— it’s from Michigan— it’s still valid, do you see the year?”

“I see the year....” he says and then my birthday out loud. Actually Real Loud. Not something anyone likes advertised. And he repeats the year twice and shakes his head.... he looks at me, “.... and—why do you have a Michigan license?”

“Because I lived there! but I don’t think you need to know that,” I say

Jörn comes over,
“we have to go, what’s the problem?”

The guy says the year again like some idiotic broken robot

Jörn looks at me and shakes his head,
“Four loko black?” But then says to the guy, “she’s not a minor, I know she looks like she’s in high school but she is not—I can vouch for her,” then to me, “come on, let’s go.”

I watch him take the bag from the guy with the drinks in it but I grab a straw

We go outside and Jörn starts to look for a taxi

“Why aren’t we going back to the parking garage?” I ask Jörn

“Because the performance is in less than two hours and by the time we get across town it’ll be another fifteen minutes, we both have to shower, get dressed....”

I open the bag he’s still holding and remove the Four Loko Black. Pop the the opening and stick the straw in.

I drink half down before Jörn realizes what I’m doing

“What the fuck are you doing?” he asks me

only I don’t have to answer because Jörn says,
“Oh here’s a taxi, you need to get rid of that.”

I take the bag, hand him his water and return the Loko back inside the bag. He pulls me to the taxi and pushes me inside.

I hear him say the address as I lean against the window sipping the Loko through the straw

“Why are you drinking that? It has alcohol, mon lilla duva, why are you using a straw? Maybe you should give it to me,” he reaches to take it from me

It makes the sound when I’ve reached the bottom of the ‘tall-boy’ can.

So I let him take the (empty) can .... hmm alcohol.... 14 proof is not bad— I can barely hear the meaning of what he seems to be saying to me, in fact

I lean against the cool window because the motion of the car seems to be bothering me suddenly

At some point we must have gotten out of the taxi and then through the apartment lobby

I hear him mumbling something to himself over and over as we go up

It takes awhile before I realize he’s mumbling in English

He’s saying over and over,
“let’s hope they’ve already left, let’s hope they’ve already left, let’s hope they’ve already left....”

“Who?” I ask

“Mama! All of them but mostly mama!”

“Why?” I ask and start laughing now

“Duva..... because you’re in no shape for her scrutiny, do you understand me?”

“No.” I say

The elevator opens and he pulls me out by my wrist and half drags me to his door. I realize he’s pressing his ear to the door as if trying to hear through it

I decide to make it easier and knock on it for him

“Why did you do that?” he puts the key in the lock and opens it.... then swings it shut again and pulls me back out into the hallway, “shit, they’re all here still....”

I lean against the wall,
“I’m going back to the penthouse....” and I start to turn

“No you can’t because we have already said you are doing the waltz with me,” he says

It seems like he says this. Or it could be the Loko. In which case it is actually funny. I start laughing because it is such a mad thought

“Why the fuck did you just drink all that?” he seems quite angry I slowly realize

“Because the mugger....” But I don’t think what I said sounded as clear as ‘mugger’

It might have come out more like ‘smugger’ or ‘sugger’

I think he, at this point was holding me up —but by my face and— looking at me like a headmistress at a convent school ready to use a ruler to punish me.... why that thought should come to me then I cannot really claim to know but it evoked some twisted ideas never the less

I look back at him and notice something in his eyes. That same something that makes me think of the pirate and then —the text message from Gerald that now repeats its alert

“Oh....” I sigh because I realize the scale of what this Loko has done to the evening

I repeat,
“the mugger....” this time more clearly

Central Park Film Noir/part 2

The attention that it creates when Jörn tackles the hooded person to the ground causes Jörn to shout at everyone watching,

“this is nobody’s business— this is a personal matter!”

“I was calling 911–“ a jogger tells him

This is when Jörn goes over to the jogger and takes his phone and ends the call. But he does all this dragging the hooded mugger who looks no bigger than a high school freshman and when I catch some of his features, he looks about that age

I see there are now two others who have showed up. They seem to know Jörn and they don’t look like they are native New Yorkers. Their features and manner of dress suggest otherwise and their accents I cannot place; not Swedish, not Northern European either

“Lemme go!” It is a young kid with a thick Brooklyn or Bronx accent, “he gave me a hundred bucks!! Idunno who the fuck he was— see?” he unravels the bill which is crisp and new looking

Jörn looks at me,
“are you ok?”

I realize I am still on the ground and actually stunned about what has just occurred and watch them in a daze as if watching a performance on stage

When he asks this I start to wonder too. My ankle.... I rub it and try to rotate it but it hurts. I stand up,
“Ouch....” I say and force myself to walk on it

“Show me the note, min lilla duva,” Jörn reaches his hand so that I may place the note in his hand

The other two ‘gentlemen’ seem curious about me and study me subversively

“He’s just a kid,” one of them says

I see Jörn’s expression when he reads the note

“Let me see that,” the other one says

“Can I go?!” the kid tries to shake off Jörn’s grip

“No, you’re coming with us,” the first one says and slips a handcuff around one of the boy’s wrists. He closes the other cuff on himself but he does this whilst looking around to be sure no one sees

I wonder where they are going

“Can you walk?” Jörn asks me when he sees me hobble

“I think so— of course it had to be my bad ankle,” I say

“Here, lean on me,” he says and puts his arm around my waist and lays his hand on my hip for support

We start to walk and I manage to keep up their pace through the park

There is a dark blue van parked adjacent to the Plaza that says “Laundry Services” in white. They open the back door and push the kid through as they follow inside. I notice there is no laundry inside; before they shut the two back double doors, I catch a glimpse of some complicated electronics inside and several monitors showing live footage of what looks like side streets

“Come,” Jörn motions to the passenger side of the van

The others are all in the back

“”Where are we going?” I ask but he just opens the passenger door and waits for me to get in before he shuts it and goes around the front of the van looking around to see if anyone is watching and then he gets into the driver’s seat beside me

Central Park Film Noir

I go to Central Park to get away from the electrical dangling live wires of Jörn’s family as they shout at each other and prepare for this evening’s performance

but I cannot take it. It is too much for me

There was a dream again last night that bothers me— it was one of those dreams.

I hear music — in my dream— the whole time

 I hear Jörn’s music .... there is the vision of the strange light of the sun over a frozen horizon. It is strange how sometimes it is like flying. I see from up above at times and it lays out like a map; and then I swoop down when something pulls me to attach to the land. It is the crashing sea; the sound as it hits the rocks; and it is the vision of the shoreline. It lays itself out like a painting to me. The blues and grays, the sand and foam; the rocks and driftwood.... and then the smell of the sea....Yes I dream in color and all my senses too .....and always have, actually,  as that is where most of the ideas for my paintings come from. Like Wavegirl did

and while I also can smell things I find things that turn out to prove true.... but only some things; specific things that hold relevance. Like ‘messages’

This dream last night was so disturbing but in a way that I cannot clearly pinpoint. Not based on any event that takes place in the dream

only the emotions

There is a ship. I watch it first from up above it then to the footprints in the sand as feet run. I watch a woman fall to the ground when a man chases her.... then she is left there

I watch red mix into the sea water like colors running across a canvas.... and see a pirate with a sack of swords walk to her and end her life

I know this had been the mother. The one who she did the rituals with 

and then ..... I remove from here; from this memory scene.... as time, like a spinning globe, moves fast to another scene 

this one of a beach when he watches the priestess girl in the moonlight .... this one is strange because it is like the Matrix because I fall inside her and see him through her eyes 

....and see the pirate with the vampire eyes 

from her eyes 

It is the emotions I feel in connection to these events that make the vision disturbing —a knowing that is a memory-like knowing mixed with so much feeling. So that.... upon waking there is an emptiness which is smothering and so heavy ....

it has left me so deeply troubled

I walk through the park

It is an hour later when I’ve crossed over the bridge that something hits me and I fall to the ground —my first reaction is that I think it’s a mugger but instead of taking anything something is pressed into my hand

I hear Jörn behind me shouting and the mugger takes off — I watch....

I watch Jörn chase him and throw him down to the ground....it is surreal

I look down at what was pressed into my hand. It’s a folded note which I open. It is a printout of a pasted together note that says,
“you expose me and I will finish you!”

nocturnes Electra’s dictionary; shattered glass retrospective

It is when I tip toe back to Jörn’s amidst the throes of an opera solo of his mother accompanied by Josef and Andreas —playing violin and clarinet respectively.... so, I manage to sneak by unnoticed. I hear Jörn by the recording equipment emphatically explaining something over the music with frightening exclamations —punctuated with his tossing various sheets of music everywhere with angry emphasis

I wonder what all that is about....?

Only I have been with the builders and Joanie for hours and ....

I keep thinking about my late nephew who passed away last month

because one of the workers was playing a deth metal band and it was a band Michael always listened to —and I become sad realizing again in a day for the one-thousandth time that.... it was not a nightmare; he is gone from our world....

So my head is in the deep morass of turmoil. It makes me think of all the sticky  webs that wrap around .... our family history

from my recent late 19 year old nephew and back to the life long conflict between my sister and I —which has never made sense to me

except for the fact of who her father was

.... and who my father was

obviously

We are worlds apart


it makes me think of how she always calls me “the black sheep of the family” to everyone she introduces me to.... how the soot gets all over me when I am too long around her universe

What a chaotic mess it all is. So on top of this, I speak to Chris the other day. Always a mistake. He always hurts me. He says he does not want to stop knowing me, even though we are not together he wants me in his life but— why? Is this a healthy idea? And then—when he tells me that my Electra complex is at the source of why my daughter won’t talk to me.... I think ‘oh, that’s why, he wants a whipping boy!’

he always hurts me....

And why should anything he says matter? If he never really saw me....

he says to me just the other day: he knows me better than anyone but.... he’s wrong! he never saw me! ....so why does it hurt me to hear him tell me these things....? These things he has no business telling me

He says, going on about playing his Freud theory
“you know, you write about it all the time; your whole Electra thing....” he says with that superior laugh he does and says, “well, that’s at the center of your issues with her— she told me....”   !

She told him? I realize now she talks to him. She talks to him. Why? ....and not me? when I can’t even look at a playground without crying

he is only her step father

was— or what are we? We’ve been apart so long now but once we were a family

Why does he still want me in his life?

my trail of exes seem to wrap barbed wire around my ankles and tether me thus —they don’t let me go, I don’t understand it

but Chris.... I spent the most years with and it is too bad he was always too inebriated to hear a word I said but claims he knows me better than anyone does

fuck him

So I decide to take a bath and shut Jörn’s bedroom door. Immediately inside the vacuum cocoon as the sound is sealed

I don’t want to think anymore

I think emotions play war games with my intellect and vise versa and both sides are hampered with their own bias

My mind goes back to Jörn’s reference to Barcelona

because that was right after the conversation I had with my mother that got overheard— right after the biology assignment that revealed my blood type did not fit my family. He took off on a sudden business trip and my mother started saying something about his not coming back and they might be getting divorced

—the past has a fucked up way of holding on to you.... it haunts and repeats

when you don’t know who you are —it makes everything uncertain

It makes you search for what defines you

it forces you to prove yourself to yourself over and over .... I’ve stared for hours at my reflection looking for my father who made me Electra searching for meaning in a self made dictionary— a voice? When I can hear his voice on the Internet because there he still is accessible and how strange is that? This mystery who was my father is known on the internet and in history books but not really known to me. I can stare at his famous pictures and see my smile in his.... so I stare at my reflection in search of him and wonder about DNA memory

I think more gets passed on than the genes —I think obsessions get passed down too; those unresolved dark horses hidden in the attics

I think of my discussions with Nigel about DNA memory

and my discussions with Gerald about the infinite memory of a soul

I think about

     what it is about Jörn..... what is it?

what is it about him that I am so compelled to....

it feels like some blind knowledge pulls me —it was like this from the moment I saw his eyes. Something about him. Something I see inside his eyes that I cannot look away from and seems to make everything else irrelevant

That is the real reason I went upstate

 I was trying to —I guess run away.

Because I don’t trust normally

and I don’t want to start —I know it is a huge mistake to ever trust anyone especially if he makes you feel like this. It is a mistake .... how do I stop myself ....how do I step back and wrap Mithril armor across my heart? I should not trust him. Besides that he’s a confessed spy —his family doesn’t really like me. Because I’m feral, isn’t that it? Well, his mother doesn’t like me.... she thinks I’m a wild fox. And Josef thinks I’m a stray cat

only I like Josef. I like Andreas too. And, no—I do like his mother, she just scares me and.... doesn’t like me

I go under the water in Jörn’s bathtub and look through the waterline above me

I see Jörn come in and he walks over to me and I see from under the water

I emerge from under and blink out the water. Still, of course he’s blurry because I am blind without my glasses so I squint up at him

“Are you drowning yourself again?” he asks me

I’m not sure if he’s serious but he says,
“the little mermaid....”

 then says,
“we’re rehearsing but no one is listening to me— I had to step away for a bit.... I brought you a glass of wine,” he hands it to me after he takes a sip and then when I take it from him and sip it I feel his hands move over my shoulders; strong fingers find tension and I let out a cry, “why are you so tense?” he asks me

I tell him a little but he gets annoyed about Chris,
“why do you still talk to him? I think you want the pain,” he says

I down the rest of the wine

He gets up and steps out of the room

“Jörn?” I call him

because I think now he’s cross with me

But he comes in lighting candles and arranges them around me by the tub. He shuts off the light so just the glow of the candles light the bathroom

He says, crouching down to me,
“I’d so much rather stay in here with you — and join you in there.... but tomorrow’s the performance.”

“I know.”

“Which you are going to,” he tells me

I don’t answer

I lean drunk back against the back of the tub that is contoured stone

“Don’t worry about Mama,” he says

“She can’t stand me,” I say

“No, she’s jealous,” he says this without a doubt

So I sit up and look at him even though I can’t actually see him

But he stands now from the kneeling position and says,
“it shouldn’t be too much longer. Do you want music?” he asks me

But I am still drunk

and I forget to answer him

Soon I hear music .... and he says something and then leaves

Some time after this I add more hot water as it has grown chill

It is awhile later that I get out

He’s reading something on his laptop and sitting in bed. He wears a black Henley with his running sweats and looks up at me. I like it when he wears his glasses to read; it changes his face so much

“Did you resolve your differences for tomorrow’s performance?” I ask him and look for something to put on as I am wrapped in a towel

“Who knows....” he shrugs, “it will have to be whatever it will be—at this point I don’t care,” he tells me and watches me as I find his navy blue long sleeved T-shirt and put it on. It fits like a dress on me and the sleeves fall past my hands

“Come here,” he says

He has put his laptop on the table next to him

When I come to him he motions for me to come closer, so I climb into his lap or start to because he wraps my legs around him and runs his hands up the back of me, under his T-shirt that I wear

I say to him,
“I don’t imagine I will be allowed to wear the opera coat.”

“Please forget about Mama, min lilla duva, I think you need to be distracted.”

“She hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you— I told you what it is.... yes, you definitely need to be distracted, be quiet and open your legs.”

“I cannot do those two things at once though, Jörn.”

He laughs at me

My Vampire/the mindfuck

....and so, I wonder what life is about

   ....is it about memories we save somewhere in a soul’s database


   are they forever?


....and so I think of this later ....after the stress of facing the firing squad of a family

   

It was something in his face before ....

    I stared at him and saw an image lay

     overlay

   like his fingers the first time they lay across my hand

like the day in his kitchen with the coffee cup.... the first time I became conscious of

   the strangeness between us

it is a strangeness that is

    so familiar

I know things innately about him that I don’t know why I know— but I do. I know every crease of his face as if I put it all there myself.... I watch him at the piano, with his hair loose and mad.... he has such a wildness in him that is kept just tame beneath his surface

but his mouth on me.... it comes out in his passion.... like some monster gets unleashed when no one is around.... he is so different when it is only us.... the private den of his mind that he pulls me into. How with just his eyes he enters me; gets in my head and in my sex.... he does this

His bedroom is soundproof too. Still, he puts on his music.

It is that piece he wrote

the one we danced to.... that night....when he taught me how to waltz. It is like this with him. First he begins with the mindfuck; because he knows that is the only way into me,

the only way in


the only way inside the morass

but he is the only one who

is this way too.

He kisses me in this way.... with his mouth he fucks me,

I have never known anyone to kiss me this way. It is subtle but intense because he waits for me to.... he waits for me to....

well I should not say because.... it’s a secret between us.... but he is such a tease

so, I always get him back

I go to the penthouse later to see the disaster going on .... I sit by the window in the ruined dining room that are full length. Sit down on the soot of what’s become the floor and just watch that segmented snake outside

the long stream of lights of traffic.... how remote life sometimes is

to me

now

I don’t feel it the way I should. I see blood on my skin and don’t remember feeling any wound so.... I wonder about life as I look out the window there

The girl and the smeden ....

It seems I have always longed for him but I never could place where .... so what is the purpose we should meet now.... what purpose do we serve in each other’s lives.... something he needs from me? Something I need? Something that goes beyond life and time?

Electra’s dictionary/Nobody’s daughter*

I see Josef reach inside his sweater pocket. He takes out a pillbox and absently clutches his heart

“Are you ok?” I ask him and go over to him

He looks at me and smiles,
“I just realized I forgot to take these....” he makes a face at his pillbox and gives me an ironic smile as he moves to the counter. He reaches for a clean glass and says to me,
“don’t get old....” and chuckles

“Well, too late for that,” I say mimicking his tone and smile back at him

I realize I have forgotten about the coffee. Jörn’s instructions.... I go over to the carafe and push it down slowly


He mumbles,
“gryning.... första ljuset på dagen,” mostly to himself so I don’t answer or search for meanings....

Josef then says,
“....den lilla duvan....”


he comes over now after taking his pills and helps me with the plunger as he sees me having some trouble with it— the top part has come loose and....

He fixes it and does it for me but asks,
“do you know what Carl Jung said about names?”

I immediately say,
“how we are all destined or doomed to become our names?”

He actually laughs when I say this and searches my eyes. He pats my shoulder and nods,
“very good.... hmmm....” then looks at me with a curious smile, “you must have been a good student....”

I smile,
“top of the class and always teacher’s pet.... not in math though....”

He seems to think about this before he continues....“I would not say we are necessarily always doomed— do you know—for instance, dawn — which could be interpreted as ‘the quest for knowledge’ or.... ‘the quest for enlightenment’,” there is something of a Yoda quality to him and his veil is dropped when he looks at me now. He sighs with a kind of defeat but—no, it’s not that exactly,

“his mother worries over him,” he shakes his head in the direction of the other room. But now suddenly he shouts across when he hears something is off and criticizes a note has been played wrong and says, “again!” but then goes back to talking to me hardly missing a beat, “we’ve seen our son struggle with some—“ he stops here to look at me with a kind of agony, “demon..... inside him.... for years— sometimes I think he has a deathwish .... no, more that he is sometimes his own worst enemy. So restless.... always searching for some .... illusion.... like he is chased by some demon or .... is it more —he is ‘haunted’?”

He shrugs and looks seriously at me and for the first time I see something in his eyes that is like Jörn. Up till now I only saw his resemblance to his mother but now.... as Josef looks hard into me, the cold ice blows a Nordic chill, “he can be so reckless....” he shakes his head still looking at me. “You know that I don’t just mean about the intelligence work— pftt!” he throws his hand like one disgusted, “he thinks he’s James Bond —he’s an artist; a musician, what is he doing dealing with the scum of the earth playing their war games.... that is a worry.... but more than just that. Other things he’s done that —well.... are worse for their consequences.... I mean, you know, the women.... he has a trail of shattered women—he’s —well— it is like the devil has been on his back..... as a father it’s painful to watch his son unable to find peace; the family and home.... as I see what it’s done to his life; his family.... We always hoped he would get back together with his wife.... his mother worries because—time is going by and the good years .... but I don’t know if you are able to understand—for you it is different, your apocalypse has already, hit you hasn’t it?“ he looks at me oddly 

and stops —what is that? 

He seems to change his mind. 

Instead he says, 

“I hope you won’t be offended if I tell you that Jörn has confided to me about you. As I got curious about the music because —there is something there in it I have never heard from him.... A parent knows their child—he’s a grown man, of course, but he’s the same as he was as a child. So.... he always liked the stray cats, you know— the ones that had seen some trouble....” he studies me, “you have been married twice and you have a daughter.... but estranged....?”

It does not take a genius to figure out the dichotomy at work here .... only I am too emotionally worn out to find the emotional-intellectual ability to empathize to the extent he speaks of

I just cannot.... do it

anymore

Still I nod but the stab goes deep inside me. I feel it at my core. I fight the dizzy sensation and hide the feeling I am about to faint; instead I grip the counter behind me and just nod

I know how to wear the armor. It covers my face like a veil

My eyes blur,

“perhaps you think I am a demon.... And maybe I am. I had no resources for having a family; I was emotionally bankrupt and I think now looking back that I should have never become a mother. I did not have a good role model and .... I think I was too damaged to be any good at it....” my eyes stream anyway, they run down my face but my voice stays steady, “but I wanted her and loved her and did my best.... “ I hold it together inside. Forge onward; steady the course because somehow it seems necessary to define for the sake of my defense; my only shred of honor left, 

“my second husband and I are not together anymore but are too lazy to get divorced,” the bravado I fake rings like brass in my ears. I go on with that sense of jumping off a cliff, 

“in our last conversation do you know what he said to me? He said ‘you are a deeply damaged person, banged up and damaged goods....’ “ 

now I laugh and try to continue .... but I suddenly realize that I cannot continue what I meant to say.  I feel my throat tighten and —far worse.... I hear it exposed in my voice so I know ....he can hear it too. I don’t say what I had started to

“What is going on here?” Jörn walks over and looks at us

But Josef stares at me for a long moment; the cold fjord blue gaze searches me ....but then I see he is moved by what I had told him. Neither of us notice Jörn there for a moment because I am finding myself stunned for ever revealing so much to him. 

What made me do that? I don’t know, 

but it shakes me; it rattles my necessary armor with dangerous bells of alarm

but he takes hold of my shoulder and bends over me to say into my ear....

he says,
“do you know how a pearl forms? Jörn has always had the uncanny ability ....to find a hidden pearl....”

(*Courtney Love song)

A touch of family Royal Drama

“Feral....? Hfffmm....” this part of conversation trickles through the air and out of context it seems to hang there frozen.... the next comes out in staccatos “....en vild räv.... vansinnig.... crazy like a fox....” it is Elsa’s voice

But the words are chevron patterns in my mind;

it is instead, something like electric shock

that strikes through the air waves that seem able to tackle me

We step out of Jörn’s bedroom together and he says from behind me,
“Mama!”

Should I follow any of this?

I look in the direction of Elsa who is by the coat closet brushing off the opera coat with a valet brush. She sniffs it,
“har någon använt det här?”

Now I hear Jörn make angry sounds I’ve never heard before—a kind of spit but it’s more like from his throat and he then shouts something.... but I don’t have any idea how to spell it....

I get a chill that goes all through me.

I am stopped with a dreaded feeling in my center— like as if frozen on the spot

and look up at Jörn..., then

instinctively I back up and look around

Why is everyone looking at me?

I want to sink through the floor.

I hear a sound come from my vocal cords that belies my courage but thankfully no one else hears this; it sounds like a strangled mouse

Andreas looks uncomfortable I notice— his face visibly flushed and I hear him mumble something at her but only for her ears. He stands near her

Only Josef looks at me now.

His white-gray brows tightly woven as they stare at me with one eyebrow raised at me to tell me...? What... ? what is that?

I see his hand sort of wave at me conspiringly but I don’t understand the context. Then he does a gesture with his head to Jörn behind me as his eyes look at him

I look back at Elsa

She holds the opera coat and looks at me. She forces a funny smile and sniffs it again. She looks at me now thoughtfully

Jörn says,
“Mama,” again but this time his tone is softly appealing; entreating

After a tense moment she says, looking at me,

“What scent do you wear?”

I look at the opera coat and start to realize what she is talking about

“Yes, I borrowed it,” I say

“She borrowed it, Mama,” Jörn says even though it’s obvious by now

I say,
“Caylyx.”

She makes a face that is hard to translate, she arches a brow and sniffs thoughtfully,
“and patchouli?”

it feels like all the pores of my skin are burning with her sting and I don’t know why

but .... I get that inadequate feeling

I half want to turn and run back to Jörn’s room because of the sting in her eyes. I feel stung and I feel my eyes burn

“It’s— lovely....” she sighs

“Hanna outgrew it years ago,” Jörn concedes —he means the coat because he’s trying to change the subject

“Ja, ja.... yes, of course she did....”

She says, looking at me,
“your father has a street named after him?”

I don’t know if that’s a challenge

Oh God....

I look up at Jörn and he takes hold of my hand and yanks me along towards the kitchen,
“I’m making coffee,” he says and then looks at me

I start to realize I am in a drama. Is this what he meant?

Shit. I’m not good at this

Then we are in the kitchen. Jörn starts barking orders at me. He points to the kettle to fill as he starts searching his cupboards

Andreas starts playing something ominous on the piano and Elsa walks over to me. She smiles,

“you have very lovely skin....”

“Oh....!” I find I stammer, “you do too....” ?

Well she does.....

I look for Josef hoping to get a possible hint or cue and when I spot him he is looking at me. He walks over and makes a secret hand gesture to me that I am clueless over. I lack social cues anyway but it seems worse without my Swedish app

His cheery eyes dance mercurially as he suggests,
“shouldn’t you and Jörn do some more practice? I’d like to hear the new ending the way I suggested...?”

Elsa throws him an arched look and walks past us to the piano. She calls,

“Jörn!” through her nose in that way that sharply reminds me of Jörn’s text tone for her

Jörn speaks into my ear softly—but it’s actually another order he’s barking at me. He says,

“when the water boils— pour it into the carafe,” but sharply adds “ —but don’t push down the plunger!”

The vampire’s Opera

“I always wanted to meet someone as strong as me,” I tell Jörn when he finds me alone later.

I began to to hyperventilate and came to be away. It was the family all around. Suddenly I had the feeling I could not breath. It was an anxiety attack and I recognized it.

He finds me hiding

I am not ashamed. But I am. I feel a sense of horror that he sees me now as I am

....but where was there to go? But I don’t think he should see me like this.

I am in the deep corner of his bedroom, by the window where the corner meets. I am low by the shadow and turned away, within but

I don’t want him to see me

I say,
“I think you should go see your family,” but I whisper urgently

“No, what are you doing?” he asks me and walks over

“Nothing but....” I turn away, “please, I’m sorry....” I say with a terrible sense of awkward shame

But he bends down , he kneels beside me,
“tell me what is wrong. Did someone offend you?”

I shake my head,
“no. It’s me.... it is no one. It is just me.... but I don’t want you to look at me,” and I keep my face away

He does not go. He stays just there. Does not come near nor push.

After I forget to wonder I start to breath again.

“I think I am starting to crumble....” I say it almost like one handing over before the plunge into the depths because I suppose if he can’t stand that then it shouldn’t matter .... because then everything has only been lip service

I start to stand up and I move awkwardly past him and go to his bathroom to wash my face. I keep my hair over it as I go past him. I wash my face and can’t look at myself

I hear him come in. He stands in the doorway watching me and I get dizzy from the stress and sit down on the tile floor. Bend over to breath.

“I saw you come in here before,” his voice is low and he bends down beside me, “I ‘m sorry, my family can be a bit much.... they were anxious to meet you, min lilla duva, they knew I was going up there.... because of you.”

This makes me look at him. It is something I’ve never heard anyone ever say to me before. Not ever like a proclamation but he does not diminish himself when he says this, it is the opposite when I hear something within that

I stare at him now. I stare into his eyes, their fierce beauty that is as sharp as a double edged sword

“My ....mother asked about the music I have been writing....” he stares back into my eyes. For just a moment he drops his gaze as he thinks. I watch his brow furrow as he frowns, watch the expressions move across his Nordic features like a tug of war between something deep within him,
“there is more to me than just my music and the intelligence work that I do— i was always going to write this great symphony..... my parents were expecting me to because it was what I always had talked about for years before.... well.... life? I have always had a recklessness driving at me that I never understood but as if I had to find the dragon to slay—something inexplicable. Especially about love.... I could never find something...it got in the way of everything. Every relationship and every work choice I made. Just could never .... find something that I could never explain. It seemed to cast a dark shadow over my life because it got in the way of —well, eventually, everything. No woman ever was enough and no place I lived filled the void. I think the danger of doing the government work was appealing as a means of self destructive behavior that is somehow acceptable—does that make sense?”

I think, but I’m not sure but still I nod looking at him

“My music lately has been inspired by these dreams that .... the dreams we share. I’ve never written this kind of music before and I am aware it comes from something else. They hear it,” he shrugs towards the other room where his family is

He says,
“I came in here to show you those photos I told you about of your legal father. No, it can wait because I’d rather show you later. The dreams .... they only began when I started reading your words. And I started to write an opera.... this is what we are working on now in there because my mother loved it when she heard it and now a part of it is going to be performed. It’s named after you —I hope you will come see it, min lilla duva.”

Meeting the parents

....so how would I describe Jörn’s family? Definitely the word “Dramatic” suits them, as Jörn aptly characterized

I find I melt into the corner here to write this into my phone completely lost in the sea of their rapid fire Swedish conversation. I cannot follow any of it. Here and there a word but then their words mean other things and instead I fall into a daze

He is right how he has explained them to me in earlier conversation. His father, Josef— I’m not sure I spelled that right.... he has a loud voice and he commands a lot of attention. Do I like him? It is a funny thing because I have not had a ‘father figure” in my life for at least twenty years—nor mother so..... that it feels .... so weird

Do I like his father....? Yes. Which is a foreign concept to me. Perhaps his foreignness too allows me to want to feel I can trust him. Without saying a word to me, Josef looked at me as I came into the apartment in this way that reminded me of how my grandfather used to look at me right before he pinched my cheek. I think it was this that made me instantly like his father. He said something to Jörn in Swedish looking at me and then Jörn replied something as he also then looked at me too.

I wonder what they said....?

But I sit here writing as they loudly discuss some performance they are preparing to do with such bravado that I swear, I feel like I am watching a Bergman film. I don’t really need the subtitles, their faces are so expressive and their inflection on words.... well, it makes me wonder why anyone even needs words.

What do I think of his mother? Elsa. I think I am a bit frightened of her even as she fascinates me, somehow. But I do like her even though she terrifies me.

They are both characters I would put in one of my stories so it helps to write about them here as I can use this for later ....Elsa has good taste in color and I notice this first as an artist; she knows how to dress so that you hardly think of her age; she’s quite beautiful; so as an opera singer she seems aware of what impact her presence can create along with her physical self. She walks into every room like she’s walking on stage. Her hand gestures amuse me. I can see this is where Jörn gets it from. Have I mentioned this about Jörn? I don’t remember but— they all do alot of hand gestures

and they walk as they speak as if in soliloquy

Not to be such a flaneur but they truly set the stage for quite a lot of material for writing so I hide in the corner well amused as I write analyzing them provided with such material

Andreas has told them all about who my real father is but I wish he would not because I still feel like it is a holy secret I kept for my mother.

I think Josef sensed this about me and.... it was something he did right after Andreas went to get his phone to show his pictures he took of the statue of him.

It was so subtle but he stood up from the chair and walked over to me; Jörn’s mother was busy beside Jörn at the piano looking over sheet music so.... as he played and she sang; her voice bouncing off the walls....

well, he put his hand on my shoulder very lightly in this tender way. Josef has much more gentle eyes than his son; they are eyes that have known deep sorrow too, I see this in their bright blueness so.... he looked at me with some kind of knowing —but I don’t really know what .... only that he seemed to say with just his eyes that he would keep my secret. But more than that. He seemed to be saying something else too.

When he found me later in the kitchen sipping coffee in the corner by the window he says,

“you have been without parents a long time.”

It was not a question. But he searches inside me and I find I cannot hold his stare. I could not even answer him. It affected me because I was not prepared for it. I try to say instead,

“they were not happy people....” I try to construct my face void of pain and keep the mask smooth now as I slowly raise my eyes up to him. I successfully manage a sincere smile because he makes a sudden comical face at me almost like an exaggerated clownish expression

He says,
“people expect too much from happiness,” and still looks at me

I want to ask him about his life in Sweden; what their lives are like and how he grew up but I seem unable to step out of my own shadows. I think I have forgotten the vocabulary to speak to parents in so instead I am awkward because I am most afraid of being disrespectful by mistake. So I say,

“I can’t imagine being so fearless to stand in front of so many people and perform like you do. Like all of you do.”

But he doesn’t answer right away. What I say makes him think and in a quiet tone he tells me,
“I find the shyest people to have the most to say and find them to be the kindest and most generous,” then adds, “not everyone has to command a standing ovation. The world needs the gentle creatures too.”