...Stampede....

Stampede....

"Where are you? "

He made it sound as trivial as he could, keeping his voice monotone, (an upward palm block pushing away any discomforting fire-fly sparks to his brain) in case any subtle inflexion might betray his inner well where the small bucket that drew up watery emotion rattled... against damp, mossy walls.

"I wondered all day what you were up to…"

I heard the voice on the other end of the phone, pause, then with a hurried underlying tension to the voice, add, “… not that I missed you or anything…”

What is the ‘anything’?

Not that I missed you, or ANYTHING.

A backhanded compliment, this merits attention... Is he saying I am so unimportant to him, or insignificant that he can be without me and forget me. An outer block - our hand sweeps the other person away from our heart. Is it that quick cover we use to outer block ourselves from entering our emotions and search for what it means to us even as we say to others to dissuade them from doing the same?

Are we scared to invoke such triggering queries that might then force us to address the answers if we have the courage to acknowledge them?

I wait until the Ansonia, New York, antique clock finishes it’s distinctive chimes, it is a gift from Camilla Gitten (she is often in the subtitles of films as the buyer of SFX - special effects materials), my friend, and her talented witty, Father who repairs clocks as a hobby… I adore the sound, always crisp and echoey. The first time I saw it, and heard it's chimes, I walked over to it and whispered, you shall be mine! I stroked it's tobacco coloured wood and practically kissed it's face, I loved it so much. I told her this, once I was hugging the clock in my arms, a year later, cushioned in bubble-wrap and she laughed.

[I smell my wrist, I have just casually sprayed some perfume on to it, and it is a gesture of mine to show I am hardly bothered by what I sense is pain in his voice. Even then my hand moves in an inner block move... trying to bring him closer to me emotionally...]

‘You always speak from a position of emotional trauma’, I thought, yet to me your life is one of comparative ease, a healthy salary, a relationship that supports you through your day to day mental disturbances, and then the work that you do, something that keeps your pocket-watch, mental cogs whirring without too many mistimed chimes. Unlike me you never needed to roll with the punches.

“Define ‘anything’…” I retort.

He laughs nervously, “Well…”

[I have added a little high-tone perfume to the dents behind my ears, and I am now taking deep whiffs of the flowery scent, you see, I am heartless when I know I am being drawn into an emotional battleground… In my mind my fists are close to my face, on guard, protecting myself and ready to jab.]

I don’t let him finish, maybe I don’t want to know how he defines ‘anything’, maybe because I know what that means. It means he hesitates all the time before committing anything to me that might mean he has an anchor and whilst he looks like someone with a complete command of his circumstances, I make him a little nervous, I dangle thoughts in front of him like pieces of choice succulent fruit… juicy morsels that he is unsure are poisoned with a truth serum. His ego is easily dented, by even a soft upper-cut from me.

I replied, lightly, “Oh, I have been so busy, I wasn’t neglecting you, I just get caught up in the realities we all face”. He interrupts me

[I find a lipstick and now balance the phone under my chin, and peer into the mirror, frowning because, I am preparing myself for a quick retreat, I am not going to be drawn into a restless wave of confused dynamics with him... I find I have a fixed stare into space as I try to imagine his eyes now, without being able to see them, I just don't know how serious he is today].

“… Emailing, and responding to your friends, family... Strangers… all day… yeah – really busy… there is no selective discrimination, you have to be everyone’s Friend…” (there is his hammer blow, always a supposedly impassioned, hypnotic suggestion... I felt).

“(I continue) … – the day to day routines and then the numerous emails I have to respond to – I am simply compelled to be earnest, not for me the superficial shrug that turns away anyone, who becomes special to me... Usually simple gestures of kindness towards me, from all sources… someone wanting to share a picture, or a poem that they feel brings me into their world... It is simply wonderful! Or maybe it is a need to let me know that they have experienced the same situation or moment that I have shared with them as being important to me. AND you know what I am like, I need my finger on the pulse of my ‘friends and associations’ – I like to know they are alive, I see them as fragile in Life... I am genuinely interested in them, I am not play-acting it is part of who I am, I thought you understood that by now! (there is the left hook).”

[I am holding the lipstick open in my hand, and jabbing the air with it! Pointedly trying to stab at him in my mind, to drive home my point.]

Why did I feel like I owed him any kind of explanation, maybe because I feel guilty towards him?

I re-arrange the strange twisted vase that only holds three sweet-pea stems… enabling them to twist around each other and then flop their heads wearily.

Actually do I really feel guilt towards anyone who invests time or affection in me and where it is sincere, when I think or feel I have neglected them. Naturally, I would - except that I do not feel guilty, because I do not feel anyone wants to own me or I them, so there is no duty between us. Therefore, I cannot feel guilt where I have not failed.

Yet, I am aware that he wants to put this thought out for me to address.

I am avoiding it, maybe I do feel guilt, or is that it is too much of a mental strain to talk to him knowing he is harbouring this need for my attention when I am already overloaded with my own burning desires to fill in every waking second of my day with activity, purpose and productivity, and reality… (as if I have swung a back-fist into his head).

[My mascara wand has painted insect legs on my nose; I am erasing these and now have smudged my lipstick].

A reality that to me is defined as being an active participant in the universe and those that inhabit it, embracing the good, the bad and the downright ugliness of it all without allowing any of it to taint me or who I am, I always ensure that I balance my thinking so that my personal sense of nobility, or integrity cannot be corrupted by whatever I experience. I am not a connective organ to his organs...

I take the lipstick and drop it into my pocket for later, to hear its metal tube rattle with some loose change, as I do my sleeve brushes against the flower buds. The petals from the sweet-pea, deep pink, fall. That upsets me, I hate it when they are broken.

It is not easy, sometimes I am beguiled by the treats on offer, but I find I can say ‘no’, easily to temptations that do not forward my steps towards my spiritual path finding (I am not even on a journey, I am still trekking through sludge and fogginess trying to find the first step and path to it).

I feel like a dynamo, just on a different time clock to everyone else.

His voice laughed nervously, “Oh, yeah – right, I forgot you are a busy lady, always in demand”.

I felt his under cutting remark was to incite a response of …. “…but I always have time for you”.

I felt his hurt, a sense of him feeling left out of my time giving to others. I felt a mixture of immediate responses rise inside, the thought that it makes one weary, to have to provide assurances sometimes. (Downward block... followed by spear to the head). Why doesn't he just speak to me the way I always speak to others, openly and without agendas. I will quickly say to those I adore, or love deeply, " I missed you all day, honestly, I just felt I wanted to call you but I couldn't, you were always at the back of my mind you know".

[My hairbrush is dragging hurriedly and fiercely through long tousled hair that is knotting as I am starting to build my mental castle of playing cards].

“… I always make time for you”, I said this softly, trying to moderate the tone of my voice so that I didn’t sound unconcerned, “You are important to me, and for you to doubt that, concerns me. Look when you, yourself appear distant and elusive, I accept it – I don’t particularly like it, it feels as if you are lost to me, but I accept that it is your way of withdrawing to think, and I know you feel powerless to attend to any matters that I have presented to you and want to analyse these and process the thoughts in your head. At any rate you always need so much time to process the simplest requests, you cannot quickly respond and just act on the thought, I leave that to my own clarity, rarely have I put my own needs before another when I know it is within my power to respond quickly, since many situations require speed and efficacy.

By the time you are clear headed, I am already beyond that moment of need, or requests and I have resolved my difficulties and challenges without you. Now you call me and it is with a sense of personal injury, I mean are you really trying to make me feel some part of your own hurt, but I am damned if I want any part of it. It always feels to me as if I am listening to your boredom with your comfortable life and now it is time for you to inject a little real depth-feeling, but of course I am the source of that inspiration for you, you almost vicariously live out of my self-determination… well no thanks!”

Silence at the other end.

I close the window the breeze lifts the corner of my paper, and ripples across the tea in my porcelain cup… I stir the settled brown sugar (which I prefer), and take a sip, carefully letting the cup sit in its dainty fluted edge saucer with its lilac wisteria etchings.

[Inside my head the playing-card-tower… collapses, as I lay down my hairbrush].

(Idiot, now he wants me to probe him and prod him to see if he is alive! I am not going to ask if he is still on the other end, because he wants me to, if he was sitting in front of me, I would have to stroke his arm or his cheek and say ‘there, there’, I am NOT his mother, social worker, does it say either of those labels on my forehead? Forget it, he can sulk and progress that thought, inside my mind I am pacing up and down, frowning, and now I am drumming my fingers. Continued silence).

“ALRIGHT!”

I hear my voice, (I am impatient sometimes)… “Look, what do you want from me, blood, do you want blood, here is my finger, here take it and stick a pin into it and see me bleed!”

“Uh… No… Sorry, I was just checking my phone, I think the battery was loose, what did you say before something about having some difficulties, what difficulties have you had? Are you okay, why didn’t you call me, and what is with your finger!?

IDIOT! I am not sure who I am calling that, me or him.

“So, everything okay with the family!?”

“Yep,” he replies. He is always so good natured and relaxed once he has extracted that typical knee jerk reaction from me that shows him he has gotten under my skin!

Now I am searching my memory, for something I can pick on and throw back at him, but I cannot think of anything really meaningful, that isn’t a pile of inflammable rubbish!

“So, you missed me?”

“Yeah, I did, I always miss you!”

“Good!” I add a forceful intonation to my voice in that single word; I want him to know this is important to me. I am irritated, that he tried to make me feel guilty, and I don’t want to hear that excuse that ‘no, you are the only one with the power to make yourself feel guilty, no-one else can do that – it is you , all you’. I want him to miss me and to long to see me, and think about me, yep I am that selfish, I want him to wonder what I am doing, and who I am hanging out with, and if he isn’t I now want to see if there is anyway I can leave him with the kind of thought that will completely throw all his normal, restrained, well-controlled, logical, linear, sensible, rational, thinking processes out of sync… You want guilt, I will give you guilt! Is this what we women think like? I want him to veer off his path, and find that he keeps turning around to see if I am following like some predator or panther… I want him to suffer a little of the fear that a deer feels when it is grazing softly and wondering if there are eyes in the forest depth.

Those are my eyes, and they are firmly watching him graze, him with his so-important meetings to get to, or bosses to see, or friends to hang out with! When he is busy, he expects me to be waiting! Well I am waiting all right, but just wait until he dips his 'oh so pretty' nose into that lake edge… I will be right there to push him in! Or drag him to the edge and hold him down my teeth in his jugular… he has a nerve trying to make me feel bad for having a life! You know, now I think about it, this is what he always does, he neglects our friendship and then when he suddenly stops grazing and looks up and thinks, ‘Oh, I wonder what she is doing, she seems a little silent, not like her at all, probably means she is plotting or scheming something, or met someone she is intrigued with and on a mental chase… always ends badly, she will call me!’…. THEN decides to pick up the phone and find his index finger to dial… AND expects me to just be here without any battle ground scars… well!

I start to laugh!

“What are you laughing at?”

“Oh nothing… really nothing at all” I reply, and then softly add, “I love you – you know!”

“Yeah I know!” I can hear his voice smiling back across the universe….

The seconds tick, tock…tick ….

The herd stampedes.


... How often do we find inner balance and harmony with just kind words spoken from the heart... did you communicate softly, kindly, and honestly - today too?....