Baron VIP

As Baron turned his chiselled jaw towards the brightness that poured through a window that seemed almost like a skylight, the column of light that shone through it was metallic and greyish steel. For a moment his eyes seemed metallic and greyish steel. One moment more and he would reveal in personality just another sliver of layer beneath which, other such subtle layers were waiting to be caressed and then awakened. A duality in purpose and interestingly complex for being so.

He retained who he was in his dreams, which was first and foremost a sympathetic companion... with the potential for abiding love. To store up daily events and process them during sleep and when awake, find that most situations are well read, he did not have to work particularly hard at trying to resolve them...

During his dreams he was unsettled and on quests, but in wakefullness was constantly alerted to situations where he might communicate across complexities in such a way that reality was an extension of his dreams and not the other way around...
Something within that resonated in response to seductive intelligence.

Like a butterfly alighting softly on a flower... and the tremor that seems to flicker through it's wings as it draws in the nectar...

Something caught his eye and he turned to his computer, and wondered for a moment whether to open the e:mail now, in this rare moment of contemplation, when he saw it’s source, the author who he barely knew, he felt a need to respond to it, albeit tentatively. Pale lilac petals from someone's window box in the city drifted on air streams to land on the outside edge of the windowsill and he gazed at these, tattered delicate petals flickered over and over and then blew away.

Opportunity and providence, vulnerability and security, each situation deployed something of each of these. What enchantment could bring was an irresistible attraction towards ethereal pact-sealing commitments, but to make such pledges would require more than self-sacrifice. It would need clarity of purpose and the desire for more than the mere gratification of superficial needs of the moment. For him, each professional endeavour generated the same exciting delight.

Whilst others found their being in creative employment he genuinely enjoyed his work, so much that he could merge himself entirely within its folds and crevices.

Each time he read the words she sent him, a dull hesitation, before he felt a rise of some unfamiliar stimulus almost like a stylus playing the first notes of a melody on an old bluish-black record, something unique to him. A crackling unamed tune that felt coldly stark, off beat and startling, or perhaps it was like her the Viennese Caprice.

As his impeccably manicured fingers hesitated and he carefully considered that her emails would inspire him to break his linear mental speech pattern into a small stepping stone phrasing… Very carefully, hesitating, then tensing his jaw, as he re-read his typed words, and then quickly reversing his ideas and deleting the sentence. He seemed so still, almost posing for an old sepia photograph, as he began to type: two-fingered military clicking, again.

More often dissatisfied, with any imperfections within himself, he hesitated before he shot ‘send’ and the words flew bulleted… through cyber space…and he would have to wait for the reply he dismissed as important to him in the larger scheme of things.

Metallic and greyish steel, his thoughts appeared that way, aloof, airless. Hers in return crackled like lightening striking a ship's deck, coppery rust through ice: shattering under foot.

An uncertainty awaited him, even kindness could be brutal.

Sensitivity for some was a long sought after emotional condition one that scarcely required dialogue but within him there was always a gate placed in front it and guards around it. The freedom of choice whether wanted or not was always in the hands of those who least needed it.
He waited a moment longer before he completed the thought.

With his hand resting on his desk, the glossy surface of the table glistening like wooden mirrors whilst the afternoon slipped past him.

He took a sip of what was now a warm gold drink, each gulp swirled like a small stream around his mouth and then down his elegant throat.

He looked back at his eleven-word sentence, too many words for the day.

He gently flicked his fingers through crisp layers of tissue thin documents. In deep thought not really reading the pages, almost from routine habit, and then glided his thumb across the embellished artwork of a gold scribed heading.

He knocked a perfectly sharpened pencil from his desk as he hurriedly laid his glass down and watched for a milli-second as the drips of liquid-gold from where his lips had sipped the edge slowly dripped down and onto the leather surface that protected part of the desk. He walked towards the windowsill. He saw papers that seemed to flicker at the corners only for a moment during his passing, almost turn themselves over in his mind, for although he had read the tower of documents, briefly he knew the contents of each at a glance.

At a glance he surveyed the street below, and marvelled how the angles of people mingling and walking seemed to change quite dramatically, angles that he studied much as a bird might before its flawless descent. Just as he had watched the pencil fall like a small spearlike javellin.

Seven people counted, for the summery quietness of the afternoon was being celebrated elsewhere, and the city corridors seemed empty and vast.

Self imposed isolation overcomes loneliness as the instigation of new undertakings supersedes any personal interests or vocations that might distract from essential matters that must be sustained for the sake of duty.

In sliding his hand slowly through his dark wavy hair he could smell aftershave that had stained his bluish-gold sleeve and he also caught a whiff of something else, perhaps the ice cream that he had indulged in earlier that day.

He wasn’t sure but the sweetness was subtle and obscure, saffron came to mind. Perhaps it was the ice cream she had enjoyed a million miles away.

Sweet subtle obscurity, something he enjoyed.

His mind was constantly deployed, details were vital and meticulous reasoning within parameters that exposed others invisible weaknesses. Earnestness had little place for rewards that earned bountiful harvests. These were often the hardest to earn. He felt weary and for a moment attempted to catch his breath.

A plane overhead cast a swallow shadow for a moment across his desk, it stretched itself out and then vanished across the rooftops. In his left eye the glisten of silver and bronze metal slipped away as quickly.

He lifted the pencil and cradled it in his palm before resting it gently on the desk in line with the
the loneliness of his circumstances. Such self reflection would always be something that he could not avoid, as a silver metallic greyish steel nail, amongst wooden pegs that were in round holes, he made his own kind of silent noise.

He deleted four words and left seven on the screen. He added a new word. He took a sip of recollection, he dismissed the thought. He deleted one word. He knew had mispelt the third word. He liked it that way.

Like walking past a chess board with every carved piece central symmetry on the board... sliding his finger at the base of the Queen's pedestal and moving her a millimetre closer to the King.

She preferred to be nearer the knight.

A silence in the noise of chaos that the material world presented was something his mind could efficiently create, and composure was easy in comparison to finding peaceful harmony, in disarray.

Heritage required no less than noblesse oblige, and objectivity was instantly the easiest deployed quality, natural and providing the absence of conflict.
If there were such occurrences as Karmic results and consequences; than he was definitely someone who appeared unsullied and steadfast in his personal code of conduct, and naturally righteous.

Where was the humour one may have asked?

In his day to day living, humour was often on the back burner where flames below it ignited only a bare flicker of what he was fully capable of expressing.

Proficiency and skill often creates a new demand on the individual to lose the playtime that each of us adults needs to engage in to continually renew ourselves. Self renewal within was only layering more and more polish on polished surfaces of his identity. In such an accomplished individual the mental librarian archived childhood, and bedded it down to be recalled only in situations where it was least likely to prevail spontaneously.

The sound of his heartbeat revealed more than even his eyes. For how could anyone surmise that somehow in lucid dreams he explored realms unknown beyond the boundaries of his reality, and returned enlightened?

I would wish for him to lose his usual precision, logical approach and sharp intellect and be less of all of these things and more able to think in streams of consciousness where more elusive (sometimes considered meaningless by those from the kind of upbringing where such deviations are shunned)… philosophising could take place.

I wanted to reveal the layers with a surgical pair of tweezers, and an incision blade, slowly taking each layer off him. Curious as I was to discover what could release him from his devotion to a career that was an integral part of his psyche and lifestyle, to something that would be alien to him, and might have tested his mind to be alive and vibrant in a different way, engaging perhaps in sensory pleasure.

But a part of me sensed that he was too entrenched in heritage and applications of aspirations that would empower those that depended on him, so duty would reject spontaneity. Sometimes courage requires valour and valour requires self imposed discipline and the need to work in isolation away from lemon-drop sunlight and scented wild flowers.

Wild bluish-gold flowers kissed by lemony sherbert sunlight… I wondered how his face would glow if he were to lie in long grass surrounded by the light that sparkled and bounced off a wild free flowing stream.. . Where meadow fern and loosestrife purple buds slowly swayed over him. There, staring up at the sky overhead without a greyish steel grey metallic building for miles.

The contemplation of all, had he known this... might have made him day dream, as he pressed ‘send’ and his email fell into my ‘inbox’. I smiled, and braced myself, for the saffron flavoured ice cream was colder than I could forgive.... Afterall, so was He sometimes, yet...

.... Could he have understood that each word that was read- revealed a little more of the bluish green and gold… glistening of wings that appeared folded behind each of his shoulder blades in my mind as he revealed the slivers of depth beneath each sliver of steel grey metallic surface charm.

"SUUM CUIQUE" ... TO EACH HIS OWN

Peacocks above: Photos Credit: Sean Cronin, Berkshire, U.K

.... Did the clock like dedication to chimes of precision mean you missed the ice cream van's jingle? ...