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CALLASSA
IL VIAGGIO QUI
(The Journey to Here)
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I looked at Ottoline and then to Ursula. I knew the pain I felt would not lessen. I had to remain beside them in this close way because to know them once was an everlasting influence. I could ask how many hearts they had broken. How others had survived their romance, in this, what was an experience being felt on a different plane. ‘You see me’, I wanted to say, ‘and I am deeply in love with you both. I look at you in the only manner I am able. When you smile I am taken away, away from this hostile world and yet you promise what cannot ever be the case. I cannot live like everyone else. Have you ever been hurt? Have you ever wept? Have you been left in the rain, left alone to shoulder the burdens of life? Are we here because here is the answer, in what appears as the perpetual morning sun, a place where the butterflies blue and yellow flutter above your head? Are we here to learn what love really is? Are we to be mended, the memories of the days gone made different? Tomorrow is here and here, made tomorrow? I have taken the breath of beauty’s core and there is no pretense. No longer is the blindness that did blight my life, not in this love that cannot die. Tell me that the voice will always be heard. I ask, am I dead? Please, show me what is possible. Show me, in holding. Show me as the sun does shine through the rain and upon the flutter of the butterflies blue and yellow, as all that is meaningful is reflections in your eyes. Am I to go away? To be scattered, transfigured?
CALLASSA
IL VIAGGIO QUI
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CALLASSA
Il Viaggio Qui
(The Journey to Here)
VI
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“And Jack Lawrence has a great deal to learn. I am the teacher, if you would like me to be. If…Because I know you didn’t care for me at first. But you do now. Yes!”
From my place of apprehension, I said to her, “Ursula. Yes, I would dearly love to have you as a teacher.”
Her answer came brightly, “But there are protocols. You’ll see. You’ll see a lot . . . Soon.”
I could see, I almost told her. That there was a great deal I needed to. I had to begin cramming it into the later years of my life. Cramming in what ought to have been the case from the day I had been born. I felt so very close to two women and in particular this woman’s difference was at the extreme of extremities. Could it be that she was the endless night and Ottoline, the dancer from the stars, metaphorically speaking?
“No, Jack,” she said. “It’s not the answer. There can be no questions, so thinking about answers is a waste of time. It can be creative though. You are creative, which is why I like you. Yes, I do.”
“You take thoughts from minds?” I had asked, as though it was a straight forward question, though I knew she could. The lack of surprise in my voice presupposed the answer. This skill was truly of an unprecedented power.
She smiled in recognition that I was pondering her. All be it an awkward, clumsy pondering. When she’d gone I would refine that, make it into poetry and art. She was after all, the essence of the poetic subject of art. There were other ways of appreciating her, but I wanted to stay away from the vulgar in case she picked up on it.
I was watching the motion of her lips. “The misanthrope,” she was saying, “Wickedness. Malice. Treason. Revolution….These are the qualities of the adversary, though none apply. It would mean being like whom we are not, should we succumb…Yes, Jack. Hmmm…Perhaps, we are like a credit card with no limit and no repayments. In my case, I am a shopaholic. I do what I like and there is no effect.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?” I asked her, because I had to. I had to imagine those lips being kissed. I couldn’t listen to her any longer. Her mystery was too awesome. I had to make the attempt at humanizing her. It was a stupid and immature ploy. She could take thoughts from minds and kill men.
She appeared to like the question regarding a boyfriend.
“You want to ask me out on a date, Jack?”
I had been watching her lips, but I hadn’t expected her to say that.
“I suppose…I mean…Yes…I’m sorry, I’m a bit mixed up.”
“Jack,” came her answer while she was touching my hand, “Let’s talk later. I must carry on now. They will all be waiting for me and they won’t suffer my tardiness.”
She was standing and while doing so, she was looking down to me. I thought I’d hit her somewhere, but the glance at her figure made that assumption quickly burn and become ashes. As she turned, I watched her thighs, tightly clad, black. I’d always been of the opinion that a woman’s body was more dangerous than all of the weapons in the world’s arsenal. Now I was well assured. That was only the beginning of her. I watched her walking away. Had she ripped out my heart and I was in the throes of keeling over? She was acknowledging those she passed. I wanted to know their thoughts about the truly gorgeous thing in their midst. I needed to get up and go outside for fresh air. I needed to go jump up and down and stand on my head.
Had I really asked her out? She had immediately arrived at that conclusion, even though I, in schoolchild fashion, had clumsily and distantly hinted at the question by asking whether she had a boyfriend. Had she taken the real intention and emotion from me? I knew the answer was, yes, absolutely.
Il Viaggio Qui
V
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copyright (c) mmxxiv callassa
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IL VIAGGIO QUI
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CALLASSA
IL VIAGGIO QUI
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