Electra's dictionary; end of Part One: Amsterdam life

I understand his sadness. It is hard to watch him from outside it. And it is hard not to feel responsible for his pain.

In the morning, I bring him coffee, he is still asleep. I bring a biscuit that I baked from the day before. When he wakes up and sits, stretching, I move into the circle of his lap. Place the biscuit to his lips and watch him bite. Then I take a bite. I kiss his mouth in between. We drink coffee like this too.

We take the tram in. We arrive at the office together and pass people in the hallway who say hello over the morning pungency of more strong coffee. We step into our office corner. Some mornings, we are distracted. But because now our business really has to work, we have adapted some discipline during business hours. It is a lot harder than it should to be. I always want to touch him.

Bran meets with people, so some days he leaves. They come from other countries, people he knows and people who know someone he knows. He attracts people to him. He is the kind of person people instantly like as soon as they meet him because he is unpretentious and has an easy going personality. On the days he is in the office, we work together; I work on images, he gets engrossed in the other things he does while we talk about the clients he keeps finding.

This is so different.... this way I see him now and this way that I see us too. It reminds me of developing old photographs in a dark room. When you first drop the paper into the chemical bath, it is blank. And then you see an image. And then this image becomes more and more detailed. I see so many things in him now.... those things that make me see and understand why or what it is that drew us to each other.... and I see a lot of things I had missed before, subtle glimpses of inner mines. They are more clear now than when we were too busy rushing to airplanes. I see those things too that he doesn't know that I can see.

We have work to do to keep our minds off things like the legal problems that he is facing and my own falling out with Dean. Dean, who I have managed to avoid with the exception of a few phone calls. He says my things have been packed up and asks if I am ever coming back. I don't know if it is my imagination, but he does not sound alone.

All that I miss about the US is my daughter. Nothing else. I know that I will have to go back eventually, but I don't want to. I have always felt buried there. Some kind of smog over my mind. It feels as if the person that I was growing up in Amsterdam I left here when I went to the states. I had to become this person that I never was, a persona in order to assimilate. It was never me. Because the real me never fit in there.

Ruud asks us if we would like to join his family for dinner.

When we arrive later with flowers and a bottle of wine, Ruud introduces us to his wife Marijke. They are both very tall and very blond with very tall adolescent children who run around wildly.

After dinner, after a lot of wine and conversation, Ruud says to his wife,

“and I am trying to convince these two people who are madly in love, to stay and become a business partner.”

“Oh you should!” Marijke agrees and openly laughs because she realizes that her husband has just embarrassed us. She says, “but you are in love, he is right, anyone can see it, it is written all over your faces. You make me jealous because you two make such a beautiful couple.”

It can be so jarring, the people of this country tend to have this affinity; this flair for blunt conversation that can feel, often, impactful, and at times, abrasive. But now, the awkward honesty clears the air. I decide to clear the dishes. It seems like the natural transition. She tells me I don't have to. But I really want to. Instead, she calls her children, Famke and Willem. She wants us to go and sit down in the living room while her husband is pouring us more drinks. So we drink some more and talk some more. They don't make any more awkward remarks and, strangely, the ice is broken, as if some secret code has been cracked.

There is a sudden jolt, a chill down my spine as I become aware of something. And I know he must be thinking the same thing as we are sitting here together in this nice Dutch family's home.... This is the first time we are socializing like two people who are.... together. Always, before, it has been clandestine. And I am thinking how strange and exciting it feels. As if now we are no longer a secret; our secret is public. We have outed.

We walk home from Ruud's, walk silently through the streets, his arm across the shoulders of my coat. We are both quiet. We stop at the bridge that is all lit up, the lights multiplied by the reflections in the water. He stands behind me with his arms on either side as I lean up against him. We stare into the water. It is so pretty. So calming.

And yet even with my back to him, I can feel an intensity that hangs around him like an aura that has been present all day. We walk home quietly and go upstairs and get ready for bed. We decide to take a bath and in the bath tub he draws me close. He is vulnerable. We talk about life and death. We talk about how strange and fleeting life is. The value of our moments.

He tells me,

“I remember my father when he was my age and it really doesn't seem that long ago. Life just goes by so fast, it's weird.”

He is thinking so much more than what he is saying because there are long pauses where he stops to think.

“I should explain something to you so that you don't keep thinking that it's you who really came between Clair and me. I never told you....before you and I met, things with Clair were --not right....something was just ….not there....” he puts his hand against his chest and shakes his head. “It was like this a long time....After Detroit, I was worried about losing my kids. So I tried to make it work with her again. For them. But... I couldn't. Being there. That emptiness....like I was already dead.... just one foot from the grave.... overwhelmingly oppressive.... but it is the house where I have these memories with my kids.... and that is the part that hurts, that part with them which has to end.” He sighs heavily with self-disgust and says, “I'm turning my back on them. I'm a terrible father and husband.”

“But maybe it is better to be honest in life, Bran....” I say now, “I understand the part about feeling empty. Because that is how I felt. Is it selfish that even a living being, like a plant or a tree requires the sun to live?” my legs are around his waist, our skin sticks to each other in the warmth of the water. “I don't have the answer to why we ever met.... But that emptiness you describe-- the one that I know so well too.... if that emptiness was death.... than maybe this is its opposite.”

And for awhile he doesn't say anything.

Then he says,

“you know, she sold my motorcycle? ...Fuck it...she did it to get me back because of the time I threw out her necklace when she cheated on me years ago.”

“She cheated on you?”

“It was before we were married.”

“So....”

“I guess things were never really great with Clair and I.... I just never wanted to have to face losing my kids.”

I don't want him to withdraw into himself. I breath into his ear,

“are you all right?” but he does not answer. And then I feel the heat of tears run down my breast.

He is my father figure, but sometimes, it is the other way. I want to tell him that he will not lose his kids, that they will always be his.... but I know how empty that would sound because I have been through this too. And there is a part of me that still feels responsible for what is happening now to him. To all of them.

He says,

“I knew when I first met you I knew how much I needed you in my life....” and he is kissing me, and as we move to connect, the water splashes and goes over the side of the tub.

Electra's dictionary; beth ydw i, pwy ydw i?

I know that it is some time after two in the morning.  Suddenly he asks me,

“who was your father?”

I say,

“I don't know.”

“No, I mean.... the one you think. You said was famous in politics-- I think you said-- ”

It is always strange for me to talk about this. So instead I say,

“It is ....a long story.... I don't want to talk about this.”

I know how to erect this wall

I know it well

.... data bases, search engines, old yellowed books In archives at the Library of Congress. You search.... you search to find answers...

“And why have you never found out?”he asks.

Because I already know 

But I don't answer.

He says,

“you're scared to.”

But it is much more than this. It is about a fairy tale.... a fairy tale of father. One that I am not ready to be abandoned from.

We don't talk any more about this. He knows I don't like to. We talk about other things. The edges of things that we are not ready to really discuss. Just like the indefinition of our lives. The one week in Amsterdam that has turned into two, now becomes three and is turning into four.... and now he is renting space in Ruud's office for our business. But still we don't say.

But right now I see that he is interested in discussing things,

“I didn't tell you.... because I didn't want to worry you....” and here he hesitates and studies my eyes, “Clair asked me about you before I left for Detroit to do your husband's convention.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

He gets lost in thought. Then continues after a moment “....remember I told you about her friend-- you know, the one.... the one she told me who is taking the kids and the house....?” he looks at me as I nod in reply. He takes a deep, ragged breath.

But then I think he has let the subject go because he says nothing for awhile. He does not want to talk about this. I don't want to ask. But I do want to ask. He is engrossed within himself; staring inward.

But then he says,

“it was the day before I left for Detroit. She asked me: 'should I be suspicious about Beth?'”

“What did you say?”

“At first, I just froze....” he looks away. He looks at a picture that hangs there on the wall; it is an abstract with psychedelic allusions. I watch him brood in profile as he stares at it, holding my breath.  "I said 'yes'” and now he gives me a dead stare, “I said yes, Beth ….because I was sick of pretending. I wanted to finally tell her.”

“Why didn't you tell me this? But... this doesn't make sense--”

“Well.... I know..... because, later -–Beth...it's weird.... she just dropped it. She acted as if we never ... had the conversation ….I think, maybe it was like a threat, I don't know. The next day when I was leaving to go to the airport, she-- tells me she wants us to have another baby....” there is an enigmatic expression on his face as he shakes his head. And quiet rage. It seems to burn cold in his eyes. “Beth, we.... we have our kids, Clair and I, and I understand, we have all these years together....it isn't easy to let …. that go....”

I hear what he is saying, only I ask the obvious,

“Do you love her? ”

It seems like my words don't make sense to him, and he looks at me nonsensically. The creases between his brows deepen, and he says,

“sometimes you wish something to be true and you try to believe it because you need it to be true.... but it doesn't really ring true....because it is empty, an empty truth-- so do you keep forcing yourself to will something to be that you know is false?”

“Is that why it happened with her? Or did she conceive after you left Michigan?” But he is closed. There is regret but also something else. Something he does not want me to see. After some reflection on this, I say,

“so she really came to Detroit to see for herself.”

Only now as I say this I imagine being her. I feel something knot in my stomach as I think about this. The other side of jealously. When you empathize with your competitor and find sympathy. And it stabs at your core. Deep and intense.... and makes you hate yourself.

I cover my face and am filled with self-loathing.... I don't know how I will reconcile this. This is a different kind of shame. I say, “You belong to them, not me,” and now, suddenly, desperately, I need to physically get away from him. I start to push him away and as I do this his fingers grip my shoulders. I want to retreat, I want to be alone because I am filled with guilt. I manage to twist free and run barefoot on the cold wood floor towards the bedroom door. I don't know where I’m running to. I get half way across the room before he stops me and I am caught inside the vise of his arms. He whispers against my ear, “I belong to you....”

He lifts me and brings me back to bed and traps me in his limbs, folding me within his web.

“But you will go back,” I say, and then, when he doesn't answer I turn my head up to look at him. Search and fall inside those deep poet's eyes; the morass of moss,

“you know, I never wanted to destroy your life.”

He closes his eyes and holds my head to his neck,

“but you didn't. I thought you knew.... you brought me back from being dead.”

Elctra's dictionary; the bridge

The office building is in the main part of Amsterdam, I figure out how to get there and decide to walk. It is different to think about the same problems in another place, leaving to get a prospective has altered my thoughts. I had suspected it would.

But as soon as I get to the office there are problems. Of course it is the computers. I am only in the building about fifteen minutes and they have gone down and they seem embarrassed for the inconvenience. They don't know how I expected this. But this gives me time to discuss things with them. The art director seems surprised when I explain my approach to how I work, that I prefer the physical mediums to the graphics. But then we get to talk and I explain about how this country had been such an influence on me when I was growing up here. It all happened to me first here. The colors, the textures, the crudity, the humanity. I think maybe he was expecting a different kind of American. I saw his eyes change as we talked.

So it looks like my time here will be delayed. The art director's name is Ruud. We have been working with sketch pads for ideas because of the computer situation. He has purchased art mediums for everyone to work in, mostly gauche and water color pencils, some clear film, transfer paper, etc; old school. The older artists there have no problem with it, the younger ones seem out of their element. The week is turning out more interesting that I could have anticipated. I am in an oddly great mood.

Each day I walk back to the flat with something I buy on the way, so the flat is beginning to look a lot less impersonal. I buy flowers. That is something I always did when I lived here. What is it about flowers? It is that element of being reborn, the fresh optimism, the innocence. I bring magazines filled with more art, stopping at newsstands every day. I buy a sketch pad and graphite. I am like a flower that is being reborn. And each day I force myself to do a quick sketch on the way home, do it until I feel too cold as the evening temperature drops.

I like the bridges over the canals. I have been drawing those the most. From every angle. I like the bricks, the iron, the bare trees, their reflection in the water, how you can see the apartment buildings in the water too, their odd gables and the furniture hooks. I love those buildings. There is so much texture here. 

And while I feel so small here because they are mostly so tall and boisterous, I feel somehow less timid because there is no masked politeness to many of these personalities I encounter. I have missed that sense of being under fire, it is like waking up, to be challenged by this flow of wit.

Once I realize that this will not be wrapped up in a week I have to talk to my daughter and her dad, work out things, but he has been surprisingly cool about this. I tell Dean simply in a few texts that I should be here for awhile.

By the second week it seems like my whole life back there is a dream and that this life here is the real life. I start to wonder who that means I really am. Who have I been all this time? I think now too about Electra and the confusion over my identity, the father complex, etc. and somehow ….it feels different; seen from the altering of the prisms. It is so obvious now. That place is choking me. How can I go back there now?

****

And then one day I am walking home and he is standing there waiting for me.

I don't see him at first. I walk down the brick street looking into the canal, absorbed. I was thinking about him, so at first it doesn't register because I thought I imagined it, because it seemed so natural to see him. But then I stop. He is several feet away leaning on the railing of the bridge and he is watching me as I walk. He looks so good in these surroundings.... so at first I can't do anything but see this because I am an artist that is a slave to the visual. He is all dark and beautiful, the contrast is startling; dark mop of hair, looking more longish now, like a poet, the dark beard cut close to his face so that it outlines his jawline. He is wearing his navy blue coat over a rust colored sweater and brown corduroy. He looks like a poet. He makes my head go light.

I walk slowly wondering what I am going to say, wondering what this means. He waits for me to come, just waits and watches me, his eyes looking right into mine as I walk closer, he never looks away. His eyes are intense, like dark opaque moss textured stones, like the kind you see on the beach, washed up on the shore. He is rustic beauty. I know he did this on purpose.... he looks amazing.... the state of his groomed appearance says so much. I smile when I think of this because I know this is all for me and I think this looking up at him now. And now he smiles at me and he is even more perfect. There is gray in his hair, maybe more so now than there was the last time I saw him, but it looks good on him, I like how it goes with the colors around us. I am distracted and my brain foolishly on pause.

He removes himself from the railing and closes the space between us so that he is standing inches away and now he leans down to kiss me but stops and looks at me,

“may I?”

He waits and our eyes lock. He is asking for more than a kiss. His eyes ask me. He asks too much. He asks for everything. And then moves to kiss me anyway, first just his lips, but even that is possessive. He puts his hands on the top of my coat to grab me by my shoulders there and pulls me but waits looking down into my eyes. As soon as the tension leaves me he pulls me into his arms and kisses me hard, lifting me.

“We should talk,” I manage to say because I know where this always leads with us. But it is hard to say this because he is still kissing me, not letting me go, he has kissed off all my lipstick, he has rumpled my hair. “We should go somewhere....”

“Let's go inside,” he says now. When I hesitate he smiles at me that wicked smile and he says, “don't you trust me?”

I shake my head no.

“Come on,” he says and drags me with him across the street to the door of the flat, his arm around my shoulders and then we wait at the door as I consider this. I look at him and give him my best impression of a school teacher giving a student a lesson on obedience. Then take out the key and open the door.

He walks around the place, then goes directly to the living room and sits down on the couch. It is only now that I see his stuff in a corner of the living room. I see his bag, I recognize it.

“You have a key too?” I ask him.

He shrugs,

“I don't have to stay here but I did come here to see you.”

“Maybe we should go out somewhere,” there is a mirror in the dining room and I look at my reflection. He has made a mess of me, I am a smeared mess. “I'll go run up and change and then we can go somewhere.”

Chapter 12 Reclaim my way again. Ego, id and me.

Lately I have come to think that creativity and madness are closely linked. But I suspect that it may just be me. The madness needs a place to go. To lose or compromise the inner eye, for me, is a kind of suicide in itself. The hold of self dashed by the vulnerability of allowing someone in.

There is no confusion of who I am while I exist in that moment of creation. It is another place. An entire separate reality. And no one else exists in that world.

I protect that world jealously. This is why I cannot need anybody.

What's in a name? Maybe everything.

So maybe this is why.

If the self is lost, can anyone exist without ego?

If all is wrapped up on a self-made identity, what happens when it has become infiltrated? I am me, I am mine. I belong to me.

I don't need anybody.

Something ugly lashes out when that insulation feels stolen.

***

Without looking for it, I stumble on a picture of Bran's wife..... putting a face to a concept. It was on his website. I was just looking at something he messaged me about and it was there. A picture of them together from only a month ago. Around the time he met me. And in the picture they look so happy! --as if no two people could be more in love. Did he want me to see it? How could he not know it was there?

It is now tattooed into my retinas and I cannot get it out. I cannot stop thinking of them together, cannot stop imagining things.... I imagine them kissing.... fucking.... explicitly. It is in everything I look at and everything I do. I am too old for this. I avoid my phone. I have let the battery die. I hide it in the back of a drawer. I don't look at my email. I belong to me.

His voice, his eyes,that haunt me.... must be exiled because now he is the enemy.

I paint for twelve hours without stopping. Work on the Demeter mural that is six feet by four. It takes me to that place. At least here no one has access. At least here do I trust myself. I stay up and work on Demeter through the night, and don't sleep, get high off of no sleep. Don't eat. I enjoy this torture. It shows me that I have mastered myself again.

Again silenced. Mute. Mutation. Mutilation? Amputation.... adaptation. I can find my way again. Ego, id and me.