…And as complexity was peeled and cut into segments the greatest revelations were released; A cubic past, a circular present and a future hidden behind heart-shaped thoughts made of edges a hundred times sharper than a scalpel’s blade. She was standing there, behind those hearts waiting for the brave ones to dare. I knew it would be a she. There was no reason and no drive. All I know is that I saw one of those jerky puffy clouds popping-out my head saying “SHE…” It was written in block capitals. “SHE…” This is what the puffy cloud showed me this time.
Before a second thought could cross my mind the cloud burst leaving a drizzle in its absence. And there I was behind this bursting cloud this gloomy Sunday afternoon which always feels the same, a time without a purpose. There, next to the window of the café, decorated with fairy lights and cakes and other colourful gay retro ornaments, watching the rain and blankly looking outside, as if the world inside was not good enough. Siting, drinking, thinking and waiting for excitement to reveal itself in the room; waiting for the colours to gain colour, the sounds to tickle my ears and the smells to comp the air. I needed distraction from whichever thoughts were blocking my being.
But there she was. She entered the room. She went to the till and she ordered a medium size black coffee to-go in English with a rather strange strong accent, not allowing me to identify if she was Eastern European or Italian or maybe something in between. And as she was about to pay she dropped her patent black leather wallet. It was one of those you want to have a sniff at to confirm its authenticity or simply because you want to satisfy your senses with the strong and smooth scent of combined materials made by hand; leather, paint, handmade.
As she kneeled to pick up her wallet she directed her gaze ever so slightly towards me establishing an ever so brief encounter, confusing me and distracting me from the observation process I was enduring. It felt like a confrontational acknowledgment that I was watching her at this point in time. That single glimpse and her musings burst right through her eyes like laser beams projecting a hologram of disarrayed realities, some of which had already happened and some of which may come; a blend of her understandings formulated based on how she experiences her factual life events. Each reality was fighting for clarity and distinction, trying to untangle from each other. I could witness each of these images in anguish fighting to prevail and sustain their essence, speak out. This revelation was not meant for long. She chose to kill her confessions with a couple of blinks. She undid the connection between us and continued to pick up her wallet and return to standing in order to pay, releasing me from her dry settled gaze.
Every one of her actions felt elegant, firm but fragile, well placed. Every one of her actions felt secure within its own existence but vulnerable within an alien environment. She seemed calm, assertive, in control; yet too much distortion was coming from her. She indulged kindly into her first sip of black coffee; black, warm, bitter, strong, fluid. It was as if she had gone under the same conditioning as her coffee.
Where does one start and where does one go with her? Do I start from her enormous heavy fur coat, from the way she picked up her cup of coffee with both hands and breathed its aroma while shutting her eyelids indicating satisfaction? Do I start from her red-hot as hell manicure that matched her lipstick defining the shape of a neutral, motionless mouth as if brain activity was expelled from the muscle group that was surrounding her lips? Do I start from her wallet, her high heels or her flashy Rolex? Or do I start from her long light-brown hair that was held in an easy hairdo yet with a vague statement to it; washed out pale skin, possibly cause of many baths and scrubs.
And then it occurred to me that there was no point to start from any of these places for she was just an image of her own imagination. What I was seeing was a temple, a container, a place where she goes when she wants to pray, hide and identify. It was one of the many other personas she possibly constructed for herself; for I could see her every day within a different container protecting herself from her own vulnerability, her own intelligence and her internal discourse. She was a woman who understood the world as good as the first or the last Dalai Lama but feared to engage in any activity of changing it, accepting it or rejecting it. She only required staying present within this world that was offered to her, with no musts and no dominating fears that may rule her life in a different manner than it currently is. It was easier for her to choose her nature through the material world, which is a comprehensive substance, rather than through a world piled with politics and ambiguous emotions and ideas of individuals. That seems to be what her cage was made of and firmly sealed. No desperation for release and no ambition for more from what she already had. I sympathised and I let her be for a moment.
She had been understood even if she was a misconception of my own imagination, or anyone’s imagination who had ever witnessed her that day or any other day; the lady with the pale skin and the red hot-as-hell lipstick. That was a good enough reason for the colours to gain their colour back and for the sounds to sound again to my ears. It was a good enough reason for the world to start buzzing and she was a good enough reason for me to come back to being; really being, as the true thick redness of her sharp hearts that she scattered in the room. Nothing was complex anymore.
The lady exited leaving behind thoughts and words that make you breathe the here and the now.
SonOfMom.Art 