“for me…. all you have to do is write 

      and know whose woman you are.” 

passing the baton to: JM chronicles/film noir

How altered I feel now. And to find myself back at the barn house again; as if nothing ever happened 

I think about the last few weeks as I stare looking across the length of the room to the window that faces the farmhouse.

But I remain where I am. Reluctant to get out of bed. 

The night of the retirement party …. feels like an eternity ago —straight from Latitude and still in my Christmas sweater, he throws me into the Swedish UN in the barn house living room. There’s Elsa dripping diamonds in her gilded gown (alliterations unintended)

well— it was Josef’s ‘retirement’ (but do we really believe he will ever retire?) as much as the passing of the baton ….everyone was there. I recognized Marcus; the director from the time in the Hamptons. Of course the usual suspects; Stina, Smulligan

I did have to work it too because Elsa, once she scared away the catering crew, wrapped an apron around me and joined the guests! It was like being back at Starbucks behind the barista machine with a massive line and my entire staff quit on me. You don’t forget how to juggle but how dare she?

Why don’t I care ….? I feel calm, so relaxed; considered and cared for and whole somehow

Andreas was there but only about ten minutes as he was rushing back to Lincoln Center.

They put a helicopter land behind the house —an interesting new feature Jörn came up with so it’s like a commute to Manhattan and the noise!

I was too busy to enjoy the party and exhausted after. But somehow it is like Jörn’s family has bonded to me now. That shut out feeling isn’t there anymore, I feel included which ….I've never felt or known before 

The last clear day I could get out before the snows hit I was on my way back to the house and my mind was on the smeden…. from the regressive memories …. the barn house from the drive up looks like a Viking longhouse and suddenly I remembered something about —that time

The tumbling emotions crash; (jmmuse)

“There’s always been rumor I exist,” I shrug now after a deep breath. 

Identity?

I get up and walk around the room….strange to be back here again ….back at the barn house in our old bedroom. 

“You get used to hiding ….” I glance up at Jörn sideways to see if he is looking at me and he is 

I turn my back a bit. Take a deep breath ….

“one day —I was a teenager in Holland ….it was this one day in Amsterdam. I stepped away from my family —the Calvestraat…. I got approached by an Italian fashion photographer —well known then, he gave me his card and said they were searching for a new face— he told me he could make me famous—that I had an itgirl face and that I would be the next face of Clinique ….” I laugh now 

shrug

“It is just as well but ….of course it was forbidden!” 

The card shredded up. I could never stand out. It was law. I am nobody. I don’t exist. 

It is hard to always process the road blocks intentionally put in my may to destroy me ….it can make me crazy if I let myself really comprehend the masterminds involved 

You learn to hide ….all the very things I desired were roadblocks against me. I didn’t understand as a young person. I blamed myself. I never knew what it was; why …. it was me; something cursed ….i just didn’t get it until the sessions with Dr. Rothschild ….

“No RADA for me,” I say laughing at myself 

Electra’s dictionary JM muse chronicles; Cover her face

“It was when I came across an old photo of him,” Jörn tells me, “without the mustache as when he was at university ….I got chills….you are the spit of him.”

“So?”

“The signature hair cut,” he says looking at me, “whose idea?”

I smile up at him and shrug,

“so what of it?” 

Because I know what he is saying,

“she used to tweeze my eye brows. Remove the arch….yes….but could you blame her?”

“Identity,” Jörn says like a headmaster reminder for a quiz 

I shut him out. I squeeze my eyes tight. I cover my ears and my eyes….let the weight of my hair tumble forward ….

“I learned how to hide in plain sight….” I say 

But add,

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore. She did what she had to do…. I don’t exist. I don’t matter ….”

Electra’s dictionary JM chronicles/Back at the Barn;sexual healing

Electra—How is it that I am able to think so much clearer now….i had not expected to feel this; I feel different….much different….I feel alive again ….and the world less terrible somehow….it is not just knowing that I am lusted for and desirable, that is part of it I suppose but no, it is the act itself of getting lost in someone else; their energy…. their heat….their smell, their savage rhythm….all focused on me….but utterly caught up in them ….and so sore now, can hardly walk, three times in one night, I don’t need a work out for sure but perhaps sleep ….

I think this has opened a memory in me….a past life memory but something else —something like I remember now what it was that I have been blocking….it came to me during intercourse as he was trying something different with me I’d not ever done and it was because of the act itself that the memory just came to me

….I know what it is now ….but I must not ever say it aloud —Jörn must never know

I must talk to Gerald, I think 

Electra’s dictionary & film noir/Driving back to the Barn House;hosting a fugue of sound and mind

 

….so 

  We were last at Latitude 44 Bistro —weren’t we? Talking to Jörn …. 

well, I don’t know what happened….

    Sometimes …. well, so long ago now …. there was this thing that happened to me 

as a child. It —would ….just suddenly come upon me. It’s shameful. To speak of. Like, it’s crazy. But—as a child I’d fall into a trance. I’d feel it happen. I could not move. I was frozen. I just was ….stunned.

Later when I studied for my psychology degree —I read the label for what they call this but—I’d rather not say. Anyway. It seems to be that the event that first triggered this as a child all surrounded this big secret I grew up living 

but it was the cruelty and violence and actual inflicted harm to me by that psycho dad with his belts. He insulted me too. Called me filthy names. He made me wish I never lived nor ever breathed. He made me want to die. And it was because of something I am still trying to remember ….it was about my real dad.and it seemed to be too terrible for me to believe that I just went blank; like white out; I couldn’t move ….i was literally catatonic. I tried later to snap out of it but it seemed something kept me from talking. And the family freaked out. They didn’t know how to get me back 

I learned to outgrow it. But this was something that later happened over and over. A trance I couldn’t shake. Well….as a scholar I understand how this could happen to a child. Intellectually, I know what was the matter. The umbrella term is “dissociative disorder”

but

  I know why I had to. So their dumb DSMV book isn’t worth the label on me. I needed that to survive. It was not wrong. I found how to escape myself. I found the cell inside. I found the Celf. So it’s just a Darwin thing

But sometimes it still happens inconveniently 

And I must have blanked

 ….and when next I open my eyes it is to the view from within the interior of Jörn’s Volvo as he slows to the entrance to ….the old Barn House 

I sit up fast, bolt upright and rub my eyes behind my glasses as if to rub out a dream ….but now, he is pulling down the drive to the two story barn house with the two story picture window and a glimpse of Jörn’s white Steinway grand piano that I swear I can almost hear 

I turn my head slowly to look at him,

“what the fuck am I doing here?” 

But then as we reach the front of the house, I see Josef! stepping out the front door! and ….Elsa too…. 

I sigh heavily because I sense a plot —and that marriage contract we did actually go through with but….until this moment assumed it was in name only and they all got from me what they wanted ….

“What’s going on?” I keep looking from Josef through the car windows and then back to Jörn’s profile —as he is clenching his jaw 

“Just—don’t get how you get,” he looks at me in that appealing way he usually reserves for lady operatic ‘Mama’ 

“What does that mean?”

And now Josef (have we forgotten that I outed him as the Interpol director?) is reaching to open my door! 

But no, I want an explanation first, not another ambush 

I realize Jörn has not released the lock on the door. 

I realize this is for me. 

So I look at him and wait. 

I raise my eye brows to gently prompt him with forthcoming intel asap 

“Papa is retiring,” Jörn says 

Three words. Succinct. They say more. 

No, his eyes say more 

It’s like slow mo—I start to notice there are quite a lot of cars parked by the house. And also note the strong constitution of Swedes as Elsa stands outside in —an evening gown; aka, a fancy and expensive garment meant for hosting or going to ….

I look at Jörn again from that alarming image 

He says,

“By the way, you passed out—but, it saved time because ….”

“Let me guess, am I going to a party?”

“No duva —you are hosting one.”

Back into the Deep Morass; (jm muse chronicles) Electra’s dictionary film noir/The medallion factor

 

I find myself utterly lost in thought. 

I am sitting there. I even forget ….where. For a moment. And…. well I don’t know if it’s ….the puzzle itself that has my mind going 

     I like puzzles; labyrinths ….knots, I’m like a cat but I’m a fox but I’m like a cat this way —curiosity —you know the saying 

Anyway I convince myself that it’s the need for intellectual connection that I realize I 

    don’t suddenly want to go home 

or do I? it’s confusing 

Haile Selassie….because it sets off the memory button in me —I cannot let him sense the wire he’s tripped. Trigger. 

I melt into the seat. 

Try not to hyperventilate 

He was given a medallion by the Emperor of Ethiopia. So many photos of him wearing it. But then it was stolen. Disappeared

I catch my breath and cover my face because I feel the blood drain from my head. I’m so dizzy. 

If Jörn knows the source of my code methodology ….?

I now look up as he had gone outside to take a call and he walks in from the snow like a Viking. He does not feel cold. He’s Swedish. He brushes off the snow from his open trench coat and glances at me as he re-ties his hair back and sits back down in the seat before me. 

He studies me without saying anything.   

Openly. 

How is it that we can go months without seeing each other but as soon as he’s near me ….i forgive him everything….? no—not this time 

I got caught in the Nordic kryptonite that can be as cold as that sea, so cold, like ice and I do not like to freeze 

“What are you thinking?” he finally says as the waiter places down two coffees 

“I thought we were going,” I say 

“Going?” Jörn asks as the waiter disappears “going where?”

“What has Gerald been saying about my nightmares?” I finally ask

Jörn leans back and stretches his long arms and holds his head from behind as he slumps low in the seat casually looking at me; shrugs; scratches his head; reaches for coffee ….

Says,

“you know Gerald…. he’s all about ‘eternal soul’ and all that ….”

“Well what does he say?”

yes, the nightmares have been horrible lately. Worse than ever

“No—well….” Jörn is openly uncomfortable now. He looks right at me and reaches for my hand, “Duva …. some omen or what do you call it—a vision —he got or concern for your wellbeing and it’s not really my field but he mentioned —he mentioned Retnuh Nivek and —his timing to tell me coincided with his reappearance on our radar so…. it caught my attention, let’s say, he’s been helpful on some of my other cases, by the way….”

But I hardly hear that last part….

Still lurking out there. Free as a bird 

I shudder. Slide my arms inside my coat that I’d shrugged out of in my seat after the first shot warmed me up now over an hour ago ….it feels I’ve hiked a mountain and think 

We never get closure in life. 

And ….that is what this is about ….what’s been haunting me all my life and …. I realize ….that is what is on the tape —my session with Dr Rothschild. I remember parts of her regressing me ….because the memories flooded later —past —and— present lives. Sometimes as if mixed as one but about memories of my father —my real father ….memories I was told never happened 

That is what has been haunting me. Because we talked about becoming a family, out there on the beach …. so many times…. it was the three of us ….the restaurant on the water where I fell asleep that time too. On the seat. The window overlooked the bay where his boat was parked; memories I could not have invented and within the snug interiors of his boat which I always fell asleep on….we planned memories together, the three of us, he carried me on his shoulders—no one else ever did that; I didn’t imagine those days which were later full scale denied; torn up in a diary like tiny snow flakes falling …. a hope lost and replaced by an unexplained emptiness where once was the escape from that horrible life in the yellow house ….with the man with the set of Baly leather belts ….but in the eggshell mind she once was, it was always going to happen and she never stopped waiting….but then it ….never did….ever happen so I think that chip got stuck in my brain; in my mind there is a part of me, still there….like actually still waiting for him to come like he’d promised and 

If this is a key

to that part of mycelf —my key

it must be valuable for someone like one of Jörn’s terrorists. And as none of it was solved really, so much covered up—why do I think the lost medallion Halle Selassie gave him is somehow ….

I’m staring into my coffee cup as if it were tea leaves

“He wants you to wear this Buddhist medallion—“he holds up a chain with a pendant that dangles 

“What?” I look up when I hear medallion as he says this at the very moment I think of the missing one

But if this is a key to the breadcrumb trail back I may have to go into the deep morass