I never thought I'd grow up so fast, so far, To know yourself is to let yourself be loved. And I want to be addicted, I want to be secure, I want to wake up after the night before, but do you get me? Do you ever get me?"
Words: Ben Watt, Everything But The Girl
......and so inevitably we come to the last chapter, the last story in more ways than one, but I'll tell you now that I think it's going to have a happy ending.
We went to ground in 2015 from the USA just before the dollar crashed, and just after Tatiana was born, it wasn't easy, we had no money and my wife was working crazy hours at the Ministry to keep us fed. I did what I could, but most of the time I looked after Tatiana and wrote. When my first book eventually came out things started to get better, there was money coming in from the digital rights and the film adaptation. The future was looking a lot brighter than it had done for the last few years, we were more relaxed and we were extatic when Carlos was born in January of 2018. Then we had an unexpected stroke of luck, I found a "posada", a small, not so rundown hotel, on the island of Fernando Rivera that was for sale really cheaply,
It needed a little loving care but not too much, I thought that with the money that was going to come in from the advance on my second book we could buy it and fix it up for her to have her office on the Island, instead of in Puerta de La Cruz.
That was 10 years ago now, time flies, this place is so beautiful, you have to see it to believe it, we wake up to the sound of the surf pounding the rocks below, the calling of the gulls, and the endless wind rustling the palm trees, does time fly slower in paradise?, Yes, it comes slowly arcing into the mind in an intravenous drip kind of way.
I could get up now and walk to the balcony if I wanted to, look over the edge into the blue pools below between the rocks, the small sandy cove at the foot of the hills where Miranda is probably looking for shells, something we always used to do in Mallorca and Maine when she was a child. I could get out of this chair right now and go and watch Carlos, 12 years old and already a lanky adolescent, toasted brown by the sun, wirey and strong, wrestling with getting his surfboard into the Jeep. I bet he's swearing under his breath so she can't hear, she hates it when he swears. I could pull this recalcitrant shell of a body upright, and with a little effort, look into the living room where Tatiana is sipping an illicit early morning espresso. My God but when she turns her head that way she's the image of her mother, even down to the furrowed brow and the gentle scowl as she tries to finish the crossword that's already been worked on for a week. She is so like her, she carries herself the same way, erect and proud, black hair flowing behind her, but with that same sweet shuffle in the hips that caught me years before.
How did I meet Mami?, the perennially favorite bedtime story told the same way a thousand times, Carlos scrunching up his nose in fake disgust when I tell him about kissing her for the first time, but still very happy to get a bedtime kiss from her later, the little faker. Tatiana's eyes still becoming as big as plates with the wonder of how we survived the transition from the US, and how love can rescue you and help you do the impossible, there are no Princesses and Princes in this story, the hero's are Mami and Papi, alone against the world trying to slay the dragon everyday and maybe succeeding, Tatiana will stop asking for the story soon, she's begun to notice the boys that fish in the pools below, soon they'll come looking for her, what are we going to do with her? We'll keep her as long as we can, teach her about the world, and then set her free.
Miranda, almost 5 feet 10 inches tall, cornfield yellow hair and eyes like azure stones, a Valkyrie, a reaper of souls, including mine. She was my first child, and the first unconditionally great love of my life, a love that transcends all love, a love that's genetically programmed to last for as long as we do, which might be a short time, who knows?. She skips up the white steps from the beach, the red pail full of shells, water slopping over her green painted toenails. She always was an artist, even as a child she could see things other kids couldn't, how shapes fit together, the flow of colors in the sky, the flux of emotions on faces, she's always been gentle on the outside but hard as nails inside, she's seen things a child shouldn't have too, the end of dreams and illusion, and beginning of my problems...silly old Daddy. Right now she wants me to help her sort out the shells into piles, first by size, then by color, then by type, and finally, into some order only known to her that will become the geometric basis for her next painting. She has a special eye for reality that girl, and people are going to realize it soon. She looks like me, she always did, except for her eyes, the shape of which she got from her mother, their color blue from me. My voice, my sense of humor, my walk, she's me as a girl, it's weird sometimes to see yourself as the other. She grins, she's so happy to be here, she loves the ocean and the sand, says she wants to move here after her first exhibition closes in New York, she better hurry if she wants to find me here.
Well, it was inevitable, the doctor said there would be days like this when the pain would be so much that even the morphine wouldn't cut it, when the hallucinations start it's never sudden, it's always like drawing back a curtain onto a stage set, but I never know where I'm going to be, or which part in the play I'll get this time. I can never tell what's fake because it's all so real, the images must be coming from my memory, but I just can't remember from when, is she real or did I end up alone in the dingy studio apartment in Boston, broke after the crash, is Miranda really laughing with me, or is she laughing at me, like when she and her mother walked out for the last time. Carlos and Tatiana, are they my kids or are they my sister-in laws kids?, what the fuck's going on? Was there ever the island, were there ever tears on the pillows after the fights, the masses of gardenias growing in pots on the terrace, were there ever the ghostly, silent patients walking in the garden in the sunset, slowly being released from their own worlds into our world by my words, the magical incantations, the id, the ego, and the superego ad infinitum? Was she ever really there holding my hand, did she ever really say "Yes" when I asked her to marry me, I'm sure I did that?
"Where are you God?, I don't see you, where are you!" I'm shouting again at the top of my voice, "It's real, I wanna go, it's real, I wanna go baaaaack!!" I'm screaming now, delirious....the nurse will come now...No....it can't all be made up can it?...there's only the white metal end of the hospital bed and the colorless IV tubes reaching out for me like branches, and the dull green walls for inspiration, nothing of color to act as a catalyst, it must be the infection and the fever again...but...ah good here ...here comes the nurse at last, the Brazilian one with the long black hair flowing behind her who always grins at me, I like her, she's just like..(blur of static)...no, I don't want to see...just like someone I know, she touches my hand, she hugged me once when I was crying to go back, she said "Não se preocupe, sua família vai esperar por você para voltar", Don't worry, your family will wait for you to get back. She always gives me a few extra cc's to put me to sleep faster, and then I really can get away from this damn pain, and back to my real life on the island of Fernando Rivera.....(you know you can pick up your flight in Valencia or in Puerto de La Cruz and go directly to Fernando Rivera in approximately 1 hour......you know from August to January there are no rains, and from February to July there is more chance to have heavy rains rains rains rains that never ssssstop...). I'm rambling again, it's because the five flavors drug cocktail is starting to kick in....La Vila de Las Flores on Fernando Rivera, where there are things that need doing, I have to get out of this chair and call to Miranda, I have to pick up the breakfast things, I have to give the doors a fresh coat of white paint, I have to call the office and tell her I missed her, I have to finish this story now...I have to stay forever this time.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Chapter Six - New York
It was 8.05 when we left the office, it was getting dark and it was raining a little, I wanted to be a gentleman so I got out the umbrella, "No" she said "I don't need that, I love the rain". "Even the dirty city rain?" I asked, "Any rain is good!" she said, throwing a brief smile over her shoulder at me as I raced to keep up. "Oh fuck, there's the bus" she yelled, and took off running across the busy intersection, oblivious to the cars turning in from Lexington Avenue, God just reached down and paused reality for a moment to let us cross without getting creamed by a Yellow Cab. "Are you going to get on?" she asked "Yeah sure" I said, thinking of course I'm getting on I have nowhere to go right now but with you. The future I don't know, but this moment right here and now has always been inevitable.
"Let's sit here" she said, pointing to a seat facing backwards, "Better here" I answered, gesturing towards a forward facing seat "I hate to travel in reverse on busses it makes me feel like I'm regressing, to much going backwards. I need to start going forwards again." She smiled a little and we sat down. There was silence for a moment, "Let me see the tea kettle again", I said, she's just bought one as a wedding present for a friend, "It's great, they're going to love it, brushed silver and red's chic" I say. "Well they better, they told me exactly where to go to get it, Macy's", "Cool, so they made a list, very practical, you don't want two tea kettles when you get married, it's a bad omen unless you're English, you need to make concessions." There was another silence as she started to methodically scrape off the price sticker with a fingernail, apparently deep in concentration.
Ok, I thought to myself, this is where I have to say something or I'm going to go off the boil, "So...can I tell you something?", I offer, touching her arm lightly with the very tips of my fingers, "Yes", she says looking me directly in the eyes, no holds barred....ok...I'll admit I was expecting a helping "Sure", but she hasn't adopted that accommodating affectation of American speech yet, she goes straight to the nub, no messing around, I see she's going to make me work. "So, the last time?" I look into her eyes, please don't look straight at me, look away, please, "Yeah, that last time I saw you, that was horrible", I almost stutter, trying to backpedal a little " I mean really e-e-embarrassing", she arches one taut eyebrow, she's sensed where this is going, "Ok, I mean it was one of the worst fucking moments in my life, I shouldn't have said what I said I was a total idiot and I felt so lousy for weeks and months and I was worried you didn't want to see me or talk to me again!", this comes out in a machine-gun-like staccato, unrehearsed and un-punctuated and so unlike me. My heart is pounding and I think she's going to hammer me to the floor, "It's ok", she says...What!? I think, what just happened?, there's been a shift in reality that's what... "Wait wait, how could it be ok?, you said you hated me". "No" she says, a slow pan to a three quarter view, she's not looking at me now, she's facing forward and my eyes are boring holes in the side of her head, I want so desperately to read her mind. "No" she says again and it's a jump cut that yanks me back into reality, "I said I was hating you at the moment, you understand the difference right? Not hate, hating", Now she turns so quickly, and her eyes meet my eyes that are still pinned like lasers where her temple was a split second ago, "I mean you speak English don't you, the progressive tense, no?, I was hating you and now I'm not, ok, but you have to respect me...and yourself". "I do respect you, but there's things going on that you don't know about and I don't even know about yet. I mean, I've spent years not feeling like myself, and now I come back here to New York and I feel at home, I feel like I met myself again, there's things going on that make me feel good to be me for a change". I hadn't planned to say that, but I'm feeling relieved about the way it came out, she inspires me to honesty. "And it's not just the language?" she asks, a little more serious now, "It's more than just that right? You came back for more than that right?". "Yes, it's all that and more, I've had the time to think about things, not just acting out all the time, reacting to outside events, Jesus...you know, some days it actually feels good to be me, like the old me...but better". "That's good" she says, "you must be happy? Yes?". She has a way of asking things so simply, yet with such conviction that you just want to tell her everything. "But you have to have respect for me, you know, for what I've been through, I mean I'm here...", she waves her hand in the air encompassing the whole city outside the bus, "...and you're here", she pats the seat between us. There's several heartbeats, then she asks, "Are we going to talk about the other things?" . All this time her eyes have not strayed a millimeter from mine, I swear she hasn't blinked, and if she did the Earth could breathe a sigh of relief. But me?, I feel calm, I've just said everything I wanted to say and I feel cleansed, blessed.
My stop gets called, "Can I do something", I ask her, "What?" she says a little warily, what does she think I want from her now?, "I want to hold you, I want to hold you close for a moment; ok?", and to be honest that's all I really want to do right now, I want to feel her warmth and weight, her corporeality and reality in my arms. "Ok" she says and leans into me, her arms going around me, strong arms holding me tightly, I push my face into her hair and breathe in the totality of her, and she smells divine, I kiss her left cheek and her temple, I can't stop, I'm so relieved, so happy to be here with her, so desperate to keep hold of her for another second, I feel her hair caressing my arm and I'm stroking the nape of her neck. "God, that was so nice" I say "I really wanted to do that", "Yes it was nice, I wanted to too" she says, and she's really smiling at me this time. "Will you still be here tomorrow?...", I wave my hand at New York exactly like she did, "...or do you I have to leave the country and come back again, again?" I ask as we disentangle arms. I get up to get off the bus, I have to lightly brush my fingertips on her arm again once more, just to check she's real, "Yes I'll be here" she says with that air of finality that she has at times, and she doesn't turn around to smile or wave as I walk past the bus window on the sidewalk, but that's ok, she's just given me a good look at my redemption, one more glance doesn't matter.
"Let's sit here" she said, pointing to a seat facing backwards, "Better here" I answered, gesturing towards a forward facing seat "I hate to travel in reverse on busses it makes me feel like I'm regressing, to much going backwards. I need to start going forwards again." She smiled a little and we sat down. There was silence for a moment, "Let me see the tea kettle again", I said, she's just bought one as a wedding present for a friend, "It's great, they're going to love it, brushed silver and red's chic" I say. "Well they better, they told me exactly where to go to get it, Macy's", "Cool, so they made a list, very practical, you don't want two tea kettles when you get married, it's a bad omen unless you're English, you need to make concessions." There was another silence as she started to methodically scrape off the price sticker with a fingernail, apparently deep in concentration.
Ok, I thought to myself, this is where I have to say something or I'm going to go off the boil, "So...can I tell you something?", I offer, touching her arm lightly with the very tips of my fingers, "Yes", she says looking me directly in the eyes, no holds barred....ok...I'll admit I was expecting a helping "Sure", but she hasn't adopted that accommodating affectation of American speech yet, she goes straight to the nub, no messing around, I see she's going to make me work. "So, the last time?" I look into her eyes, please don't look straight at me, look away, please, "Yeah, that last time I saw you, that was horrible", I almost stutter, trying to backpedal a little " I mean really e-e-embarrassing", she arches one taut eyebrow, she's sensed where this is going, "Ok, I mean it was one of the worst fucking moments in my life, I shouldn't have said what I said I was a total idiot and I felt so lousy for weeks and months and I was worried you didn't want to see me or talk to me again!", this comes out in a machine-gun-like staccato, unrehearsed and un-punctuated and so unlike me. My heart is pounding and I think she's going to hammer me to the floor, "It's ok", she says...What!? I think, what just happened?, there's been a shift in reality that's what... "Wait wait, how could it be ok?, you said you hated me". "No" she says, a slow pan to a three quarter view, she's not looking at me now, she's facing forward and my eyes are boring holes in the side of her head, I want so desperately to read her mind. "No" she says again and it's a jump cut that yanks me back into reality, "I said I was hating you at the moment, you understand the difference right? Not hate, hating", Now she turns so quickly, and her eyes meet my eyes that are still pinned like lasers where her temple was a split second ago, "I mean you speak English don't you, the progressive tense, no?, I was hating you and now I'm not, ok, but you have to respect me...and yourself". "I do respect you, but there's things going on that you don't know about and I don't even know about yet. I mean, I've spent years not feeling like myself, and now I come back here to New York and I feel at home, I feel like I met myself again, there's things going on that make me feel good to be me for a change". I hadn't planned to say that, but I'm feeling relieved about the way it came out, she inspires me to honesty. "And it's not just the language?" she asks, a little more serious now, "It's more than just that right? You came back for more than that right?". "Yes, it's all that and more, I've had the time to think about things, not just acting out all the time, reacting to outside events, Jesus...you know, some days it actually feels good to be me, like the old me...but better". "That's good" she says, "you must be happy? Yes?". She has a way of asking things so simply, yet with such conviction that you just want to tell her everything. "But you have to have respect for me, you know, for what I've been through, I mean I'm here...", she waves her hand in the air encompassing the whole city outside the bus, "...and you're here", she pats the seat between us. There's several heartbeats, then she asks, "Are we going to talk about the other things?" . All this time her eyes have not strayed a millimeter from mine, I swear she hasn't blinked, and if she did the Earth could breathe a sigh of relief. But me?, I feel calm, I've just said everything I wanted to say and I feel cleansed, blessed.
My stop gets called, "Can I do something", I ask her, "What?" she says a little warily, what does she think I want from her now?, "I want to hold you, I want to hold you close for a moment; ok?", and to be honest that's all I really want to do right now, I want to feel her warmth and weight, her corporeality and reality in my arms. "Ok" she says and leans into me, her arms going around me, strong arms holding me tightly, I push my face into her hair and breathe in the totality of her, and she smells divine, I kiss her left cheek and her temple, I can't stop, I'm so relieved, so happy to be here with her, so desperate to keep hold of her for another second, I feel her hair caressing my arm and I'm stroking the nape of her neck. "God, that was so nice" I say "I really wanted to do that", "Yes it was nice, I wanted to too" she says, and she's really smiling at me this time. "Will you still be here tomorrow?...", I wave my hand at New York exactly like she did, "...or do you I have to leave the country and come back again, again?" I ask as we disentangle arms. I get up to get off the bus, I have to lightly brush my fingertips on her arm again once more, just to check she's real, "Yes I'll be here" she says with that air of finality that she has at times, and she doesn't turn around to smile or wave as I walk past the bus window on the sidewalk, but that's ok, she's just given me a good look at my redemption, one more glance doesn't matter.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Chapter Three - Durham City
In the only photo I have with me here I am 15, maybe 16 years old. I have on a white cheesecloth shirt with red and blue embroidery, flared light blue jeans, some Kashmiri beads around my neck, a leather wrist band on my left wrist combined with a few cheap Indian bangles, and I have long hair, lots of it, I'm lying on the bed, odalisque style, on the orange candlewick bedspread and the curtains are a riot of color, they'd been bought with the G-Plan Danish furniture in the late 60's, they were great for staring at when you were tripping, as was the Bridget Riley Op Art cover for the Faust Tapes album that I had Blu-Tacked to the wall over my bed. (Tell them about the hair...) Ok, back to the hair, it fell down my back past my shoulders, I used to hook the sides behind my ears, and there were definitely cool and uncool ways to flick your head back so that it fell just right.
It used to drive my Mom crazy, that and the two gold earrings in my left ear, "Oh dear (deep Valium sigh), Douglas, what will the neighbors think?, You look like a drug taking hippy, not a nice boy, you were always such a nice boy", this last word trails off into the deepest sigh the world has ever heard and it's probably still echoing around deep down in the Marianas Trench. She kept a faded school photo of me when I was around 12 years old on display on the kitchen window sill, she could look at it while she was washing the dishes, just to remind her that I really was her son, and that I had really been nice once. That photo went into the rubbish bin more than once, but she always seemed to find it and rescue it, or me.
Anyway, Mom was right on the money there, about my extra curricular activities, her paranoia never failed her, we never talked about the sweet smell of pot coming from my room late at night, or her ambushing me while sitting in the living room with a half empty bottle of whatever, or her new pill prescription being gone in 2 weeks instead of 4. We never mentioned the day I started laughed hysterically at Sunday lunch, my Auntie Flo had come to visit and she was wearing a black and yellow striped sweater, she looked just like a bee. The 500 micrograms of White Lightning was making itself felt, and every time she tried to speak instead of making words she buzzed...(I don't know who was more shocked, me or her)..."Pleasze passz the peaszzzz, pleazzzz pazz ze peazzzz, pzzzzz pzzzzz bzzz.", an absolute laugh riot, but the bad kind, it took me 2 days in bed to stop laughing over it, and I can still see the freeze frame picture of my Mom's face with it's rictus of shock and alarm, and I can still see in fine detail the proboscis that had grown from where my Aunt's nose should have been.
Well, hey I was young, what the fuck did I care what the neighbors thought, I only cared what Lesley thought, and she liked my long hair, and the earrings, she thought it made me look like a Gypsy, even though my Dad's family were real-life Gypsies, Romany's in fact, in Wales, and I got my darker, slightly Slavic looks from them. She was beautiful, I still have a picture or two of her on a trip we took one sodden winter week to St.Ives, in my favorite, she's sitting on a garden wall, she's wearing a 60's pink floral mini dress and she's pouting unhappily at the camera and by extension, at me. I made a lot of inane comments those days, thinking myself an intellectual and a thinker, but she could see through the crap, at 16 she was through with that, and was grounded, I envied her ability to stand up under the weight of gravity. When we were 18 or so, she told me seriously one night that she wanted to have my child, that it didn't matter if I was going to be around or not, but she wanted it...so...I did the most selfish thing I could and ran the fuck away, sometimes now I wish I'd stayed, but back then I really would have been a lousy father.
It used to drive my Mom crazy, that and the two gold earrings in my left ear, "Oh dear (deep Valium sigh), Douglas, what will the neighbors think?, You look like a drug taking hippy, not a nice boy, you were always such a nice boy", this last word trails off into the deepest sigh the world has ever heard and it's probably still echoing around deep down in the Marianas Trench. She kept a faded school photo of me when I was around 12 years old on display on the kitchen window sill, she could look at it while she was washing the dishes, just to remind her that I really was her son, and that I had really been nice once. That photo went into the rubbish bin more than once, but she always seemed to find it and rescue it, or me.
Anyway, Mom was right on the money there, about my extra curricular activities, her paranoia never failed her, we never talked about the sweet smell of pot coming from my room late at night, or her ambushing me while sitting in the living room with a half empty bottle of whatever, or her new pill prescription being gone in 2 weeks instead of 4. We never mentioned the day I started laughed hysterically at Sunday lunch, my Auntie Flo had come to visit and she was wearing a black and yellow striped sweater, she looked just like a bee. The 500 micrograms of White Lightning was making itself felt, and every time she tried to speak instead of making words she buzzed...(I don't know who was more shocked, me or her)..."Pleasze passz the peaszzzz, pleazzzz pazz ze peazzzz, pzzzzz pzzzzz bzzz.", an absolute laugh riot, but the bad kind, it took me 2 days in bed to stop laughing over it, and I can still see the freeze frame picture of my Mom's face with it's rictus of shock and alarm, and I can still see in fine detail the proboscis that had grown from where my Aunt's nose should have been.
Well, hey I was young, what the fuck did I care what the neighbors thought, I only cared what Lesley thought, and she liked my long hair, and the earrings, she thought it made me look like a Gypsy, even though my Dad's family were real-life Gypsies, Romany's in fact, in Wales, and I got my darker, slightly Slavic looks from them. She was beautiful, I still have a picture or two of her on a trip we took one sodden winter week to St.Ives, in my favorite, she's sitting on a garden wall, she's wearing a 60's pink floral mini dress and she's pouting unhappily at the camera and by extension, at me. I made a lot of inane comments those days, thinking myself an intellectual and a thinker, but she could see through the crap, at 16 she was through with that, and was grounded, I envied her ability to stand up under the weight of gravity. When we were 18 or so, she told me seriously one night that she wanted to have my child, that it didn't matter if I was going to be around or not, but she wanted it...so...I did the most selfish thing I could and ran the fuck away, sometimes now I wish I'd stayed, but back then I really would have been a lousy father.
At that time she thought that being a Gypsy would be so cool, it was a facet of the free wandering lifestyle we all fancied having once we could break away from the torpid, tentacular clutches of Mom and Dad, and the circle of Hell that was Durham Johnston Secondary school, which was about number 7 on my list of "things to do today", (the first circle of hell to be exact, where we were not judged by Minos, but by Mr.Cuthbert, who was not only the Head Master but also our Religion Teacher), and in true rebellious spirit, we would throw off the chains of what we saw as real suburban red brick wall privet hedge bourgeois middle class Tory hell.
Well it was the early 70's, in England, and the tide had already gone out on the economic boom, there we were, high and dry, the whole hippy/gypsy/Crowley/androgynous thing looked great compared to un-swinging prissy England, in backwater prissy North East England to be exact.
I guess it was a summer day, we'd brought a picnic and were lying on a blanket spread out under a tree, an idyllic moment like a Manet painting. Hmm, memories you say, will you reminisce about that day, did it mark you for life, was there a psychic undertow? Memories often are idyllic aren't they, perfect memories, a greetings card moment...but this is the thing...I can't trust my memories any more, I'm never sure these days if they're real or if I'm grabbing derangedly onto a scene from a movie, or a description in a book, or perhaps it's all just made up for this story and none of this ever happened... but truth be told, she might of been sad that afternoon, she was sad a lot those days, I never really knew why, and I don't remember if I ever cared to ask why....no....I must of done, I did a lot of caring back then I seem to recall.
Ok, so it was a perfect summer day and we'd spread out an Indian print blanket below the perfect tree, we're lying side my side, barely touching, though from time to time I could feel the soft down on her right arm caress me as she reached across me for a cigarette, and we're staring at the perfectly white clouds that are drifting through the picture perfect blue sky, occasionally their symmetry is cut and carved into as they pass over the tallest branches of this perfect tree. Did I tell you how she looked, I don't really remember all that about the trees and the sky, but I do remember her face, her hair was blond, she had perfect long lashed blue eyes, there was some Asian DNA in there some where and they were wider than most English people's eyes, many guys didn't fall for her looks, they wanted something a little more normal and balanced, and they thought she looked a bit weird, but if you liked the eccentric and the off kilter then you would have found her as beautiful as I did that day....and many days (I was an egomaniac fool then and I let her go because I thought I could do better).
She jumped up suddenly and started rummaging through the huge brown leather saddlebag she used to lug around, part handbag, part home from home, They have to be here somewhere!, she was half muttering to the bag and half to herself, Where the hell have they got to?, she added fretfully. What's going on babe, I attempt to be really cool, trying to channel my French Alain Delon in answer to her Germanic Nico, but she's deep into the bottomless depths of that bag and all I hear is monotone cursing. Come on back down - I almost plead, losing my non-existent cool, No, no way I gotta find the cards I just got a flash about you - she projects the words upwards in an arc out of the bottom of the bag, I have to ask, being too stoned to truly guess or remember - What cards?. She almost yells at me - The Tarot cards! Doug, The Tarot! What else?. Now I get it, she's been on the Lebanese hash all afternoon and she's tripping, seeing things in the sky and having time slip away from under her her, she can get like this some times, she'll be really serious and she'll want me to pay full attention to her. All I can think of is getting her to calm down and come lie back down, so I can run my fingers through her hair and space out. Lesley it's ok, don't freak out we'll get the cards from your house later, come back here and have a ciggy - I pat the grass she's flattened already - you know my future already, lots of fucking great gear and pegging out on stage from a heart attack at thirty, right - I'm joking with her to get her riled up a bit so she'll get her mind off the cards, she hates it when I talk that way, even jokingly. All this time she's been diving in the depths and suddenly she appears triumphantly - Got 'em yay gimme a ciggy I have to concentrate now ok so stop talking...she giggles and falls over my leg, landing on top of me, I go to throw my arms around her to keep her down but she's too damn fast, and in a blur of hair and denim jacket she's sitting cross legged on the grass close to me, I wish I could take a picture.
Ok, let's see if I'm crazy - she almost gloats shuffling the deck, the Crowley Thoth deck I see, this means real business is coming whatever the cards say. Ok, you know what to do, cut the cards, and lay three out in a row...just here - she draws a line between us in the grass humming under her breath. I think - I hope this future's not too permanent. Really, why would I think that?, why so jittery all of a sudden?, do I sense something? She's not got bad news for me has she?, it's too perfect a day for bad news.
I guess it was a summer day, we'd brought a picnic and were lying on a blanket spread out under a tree, an idyllic moment like a Manet painting. Hmm, memories you say, will you reminisce about that day, did it mark you for life, was there a psychic undertow? Memories often are idyllic aren't they, perfect memories, a greetings card moment...but this is the thing...I can't trust my memories any more, I'm never sure these days if they're real or if I'm grabbing derangedly onto a scene from a movie, or a description in a book, or perhaps it's all just made up for this story and none of this ever happened... but truth be told, she might of been sad that afternoon, she was sad a lot those days, I never really knew why, and I don't remember if I ever cared to ask why....no....I must of done, I did a lot of caring back then I seem to recall.
Ok, so it was a perfect summer day and we'd spread out an Indian print blanket below the perfect tree, we're lying side my side, barely touching, though from time to time I could feel the soft down on her right arm caress me as she reached across me for a cigarette, and we're staring at the perfectly white clouds that are drifting through the picture perfect blue sky, occasionally their symmetry is cut and carved into as they pass over the tallest branches of this perfect tree. Did I tell you how she looked, I don't really remember all that about the trees and the sky, but I do remember her face, her hair was blond, she had perfect long lashed blue eyes, there was some Asian DNA in there some where and they were wider than most English people's eyes, many guys didn't fall for her looks, they wanted something a little more normal and balanced, and they thought she looked a bit weird, but if you liked the eccentric and the off kilter then you would have found her as beautiful as I did that day....and many days (I was an egomaniac fool then and I let her go because I thought I could do better).
She jumped up suddenly and started rummaging through the huge brown leather saddlebag she used to lug around, part handbag, part home from home, They have to be here somewhere!, she was half muttering to the bag and half to herself, Where the hell have they got to?, she added fretfully. What's going on babe, I attempt to be really cool, trying to channel my French Alain Delon in answer to her Germanic Nico, but she's deep into the bottomless depths of that bag and all I hear is monotone cursing. Come on back down - I almost plead, losing my non-existent cool, No, no way I gotta find the cards I just got a flash about you - she projects the words upwards in an arc out of the bottom of the bag, I have to ask, being too stoned to truly guess or remember - What cards?. She almost yells at me - The Tarot cards! Doug, The Tarot! What else?. Now I get it, she's been on the Lebanese hash all afternoon and she's tripping, seeing things in the sky and having time slip away from under her her, she can get like this some times, she'll be really serious and she'll want me to pay full attention to her. All I can think of is getting her to calm down and come lie back down, so I can run my fingers through her hair and space out. Lesley it's ok, don't freak out we'll get the cards from your house later, come back here and have a ciggy - I pat the grass she's flattened already - you know my future already, lots of fucking great gear and pegging out on stage from a heart attack at thirty, right - I'm joking with her to get her riled up a bit so she'll get her mind off the cards, she hates it when I talk that way, even jokingly. All this time she's been diving in the depths and suddenly she appears triumphantly - Got 'em yay gimme a ciggy I have to concentrate now ok so stop talking...she giggles and falls over my leg, landing on top of me, I go to throw my arms around her to keep her down but she's too damn fast, and in a blur of hair and denim jacket she's sitting cross legged on the grass close to me, I wish I could take a picture.
Ok, let's see if I'm crazy - she almost gloats shuffling the deck, the Crowley Thoth deck I see, this means real business is coming whatever the cards say. Ok, you know what to do, cut the cards, and lay three out in a row...just here - she draws a line between us in the grass humming under her breath. I think - I hope this future's not too permanent. Really, why would I think that?, why so jittery all of a sudden?, do I sense something? She's not got bad news for me has she?, it's too perfect a day for bad news.
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