xmas 2014

I'm not sure I've written about this ever on here, i might have. 

i think about it now i guess.... there was something I saw that triggered stuff. It was the year I was leaving Chris, I was in Connecticut for the holidays. I was staying with MM. I guess that was, for us, our last hurrah. 

i met one of my half brothers, of my biological father. there are two. anyway, for awhile, we struck up a kind of rapport and i never allowed myself to tell him exactly who i was, just that my mother knew his father a long time ago.

I have written about this. I suppose much of why I like to read about history and those historical figures so much is because of who he was and I want to understand better as an objective outsider; a bystander how this may be understood.  of course, I could not tell him who I was. His mother ruined our father in court publicly. she ruined him. I heard stories from my mother. she told me everything. of cousre she omitted the dirty deed but it was admitted without words a million times, who am i kidding? the point is....

i got convinced by MM that I ought to meet him. It was the start of my life as a single person after Chris and I was fresh for the course of start.... 

Why do I look at this now? I guess because there is a need to examine meaning. 

How did our meeting go? do you wonder. I know I wrote of this. We met at Grand Central Station. He is tall, like our father. He is dark haired, like our father. This was the first thing that I observed. 

But that was where their resemblance ended. It is a strange thing to meet a sibling for the first time when you are all grown up. I examined his features. I searched. But I felt a jab within; the same as what I have known of my other sibling. This stranger, this man who is my half brother who does not know that I know this and he only sees me....as some kind of fawning groupie bimbo— but I think, wait, no? —like surly he would have suspected? seen the resemblance ….? I mean, after all look who our notorious father was..... 

He was not erudite. I was immediately disgusted. I was turned off by his manner. He was handsome, I guess, but the kind I do not like; arrogant with the machismo  assumed by his assumed superiority based on his gender. He acted towards me as if I was a prospective hook up, eyeing me, flirting, sharing his fries with me and calling for more shots.

What did I expect? 

I cried all the way back to MM's and had to repair my makeup on the train. we would spend new years eve in Manhattan watching the ball drop at Time's Square with Tristan; American and Jan; Swedish, her gay couple friends flown in from Milan to crash our party.

I see him putting up old photos of dad and he imposes himself as if he is meant to step in those shoes but .... it was a moment of pause and i just felt like some lost shuffled Princess of Joan of Wales, bastard to a king and tossed to the mountains in exile 

maybe in a world of peacocks that is totally perfect

                   I don't recognize that world anymore as significant enough to look at. it is dull and boring to look at it. 

I guess what made me feel sad about his post was-- he feels so fake; like a pretender and it deeply disturbs me. Did he know sitting next to me that I was his sister? Or worse, so shallow, did he only think of me as pussy? Like cast from an Ex lover of his father's so why not? Did I feel flattered he flirted with me? No! I was shocked. Why should I have been as his own culture is that way so, perhaps it was not within his intelligence to see beyond the box. 

He was not intellectual. Not even philosophical; I tried to engage him in politics. He was not political either! even as he is now (and was trying to then) running for office! 

I think what upset me was-- there was no connection. It could very well have been my sister sitting there. He was interested in the football game they had on and playing footsie with me

that was a turning point that Christmas .... I met my half biologerical brother for the first time and last, one of the only living connection to my father

what is truth?

non-haiku falling autumn winter

the odd incongruence 

of a shatter of golden ochre autumn leaves 

upon a near foot of white snow 

illuminated under the lamppost 

 

Electra’s dictionary Noir/a coffee déjà vu

I suppose I must have got lost in thought staring into the vastness of the street, how fast things move— don’t they?

why must they?

Josef shocks me out of my fugue by appearing suddenly next to me. The Viking ambush again. But he holds a cup of coffee and offers it to me,

“sorry, it’s not instant, he’s dragged out the French press, but there’s honey in it, you see I remembered—and some of the almond milk I saw in there, but—no, Jörn made it for you.”

I don’t look at him right away. I feel guilty and smile and take the cup…. Folkmoot ….? I get that feeling again …. Like that time—the first time in Jörn’s kitchen; he handed me the cup and ….I felt it…. that sense of an overlay of ….lives…. Josef ….he was there —then ….that’s what ….it was that day at the barn house—I forgot I saw it then too

I shudder but manage to suppress it and sip the coffee and look up at Josef 

“We never had that conversation,” he tells me in that wise old voice which he exaggerates because he can’t resist the drama 

“Which one?” I ask him

“You have been angry at me,” he says this as if no time passed since he’d last said it

Had I forgotten? 

His eyes, when his twinkle, are not the same as Jörn’s —Josef has a more Father Christmas about his whereas Jörn’s twinkle is always —well, noir ….

“Because you pretended to like me and it was just to get me legally hitched to your son for your opera house,” I tell him this without any drama at all. I state it because this is what happened. 

I hear Jörn laugh from the coffee pot as he brings two more cups over to the table; he places one in front of Josef who has settled himself at —the head of the rectangular table. Of course. Folkmoot, I think ….

But blurt,

“Jörn, did Gerald tell you I was back?” turning to Jörn as he—presumptuously— sits beside me on the kitchen bench that parallels the full length picture window 

But now it is Josef who laughs and says,

“you think he needs a psychic to tell him you’re back when he’s an international spy?”

“I’m an ‘intelligence decipherer’ not a spy, papa —is that what you went by?” Jörn replies 

Josef laughs,

“I’m a respectable symphony conductor, that’s what it says on my tax papers….pass the socker.”

Electra’s dictionary noir/Vad är det här för sorts kaffe?

….but no I am not ready for this 

      still spinning from ….everything 

          But I don’t have the energy to fight two Vikings so, I step away and let them pass and by now even Josef knows the layout ….so we go without saying to the kitchen where I was making myself coffee 

I look at it and walk away and go to the window instead. I sit in the window seat and just stare out into the vast abyss of the city but I do hear Jörn exclaim over my coffee. I hear his indignant Swedish gasp and say,

“Vad är det här för sorts kaffe? Jag kom hit i tid, hon dricker snabbkaffe – hon har verkligen sjunkit ihop, stackars duva!”

It just sounds like a scene from Fanny and Alexander to me so I just sit there staring as I hear him rummaging around in the kitchen. I put my head into the glass and close my eyes listening to Josef and Jörn bicker 

and …. just whisper to myself, “tack så mycket….”

Electra’s dictionary Noir/ let sleeping bats lay

Electra’s dictionary Noir 

It seems as though I confuse Dream with day dream because I am sure that the light flares that stain my eyes are real and alive and glowing bats 

I sit bolt upright in bed in a sudden cold sweat staring at the walls as ….the dream image ….fades and subsides ….into shadows ….shadows with wings 

What is that? I find I wonder as I follow the winged black shadows that infest my night walls —as I feel the floors vibrate 

I get up and walk to the window that overlooks the city street from the vast distance above. The window is old with the French door arches that reach up to the ceiling. There are two sets of these that are covered in heavy mauve velvet drapery; I pull these back along with the Belgium antique lace curtain sheers 

The moving lights come from the cars and trucks but what causes the bat effect? It must be something else down there, I think, and move closer to the glass to look down. 

It is not possible to see the cars, they are dots from here and the dashes are trucks 

I open the window a crack to look out. There is a small ledge; a very narrow balcony not really meant for standing, but I can open the window enough and lean out

But the air is damp chill and now so is the bedroom …. but …. 

No I do not imagine music —I hear it and it strangely catches me for a moment as I had not expected it. And not ready for it. 

I go back to the bed 

I want to hide. From games. I just want real ….

    The shadows that move like bats mix with the music and I say to myself —not ready; not now—and maybe never 

I get up and shut the window and find my silk blindfold to shut it out

****

It is some time after eight in the morning when I hear a sound I don’t recognize 

I go from the kitchen where I am making coffee to find where the sound is coming from; I’d thought it was my phone but I don’t have a tone like what this is. I go through the lounge area and down the long hall to the entrance and slowly realize the penthouse has a doorbell! I’ve never known cause for it until this moment. 

It is still going too ….it is not a classic doorbell sound, you see, this has a techy sound amplified to sound like Tibetan percussion. I knew about the peephole in the door; again, never had much need for it as no one has access to the penthouse unless it’s someone like Illya 

I carefully lean to peek through it

“Shit!” I whisper aloud and jump back —there’s a mirror by the door and I look like I just rolled out of bed, I fix my hair and straighten my shirt and jeans

“Duvan?” I hear through the door 

Josef 

I take a deep breath and open the door 

“Josef?”

He also looks slightly like he rolled out of bed but chipper and healthy despite that in his Nordic blue bathrobe—he’s holding something in his hand which now appears to be a measuring cup 

“Urm—“ he says

“What’s going on?” I ask him

He raises the cup,

“could we borrow a cup of honey?”

“You came up to the penthouse to borrow a cup of honey?”

“Elsa is making honey cakes,” he tells me

But it is an obvious lie and I try not to laugh —and then what? 

The elevator opens and —Jörn sweeps out,

“Papa! I said to leave it! Why must you always interfere? I was giving her time!”

“And you think serenading her through a soundproof floor will conjure her passion?” Josef turns to Jörn