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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? ...

...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?....

Thoughts uninterupted...

“Hello”,

I said it softly, not to wake the motionless spider that hovered petrified in the frozen web, or even to send a tremor through the icy cold air that made my skin shimmer on this frostiest of mornings.

I was at college, and had spent three days in a brooding heavy mood, one that my brother might have called a ‘sulking, and pouting strop’, (I have had a few of those in my time too), this time it wasn’t the silent treatment of the precocious child in me. The splendour of winter’s elegance was wasted on me that year, for every day felt unfulfilled. As if the heaviness of unforgiving mental mirrors that reflected back all that I wanted to improve or change within myself bound by the sense of failure that I was somehow unable to affect change. The changes were never superficial ones concerning any self-images, but more about how disenchanted I was with the focus many of my friends appeared to have on material vestiges of their perceived success. Some would boast of their latest vehicles, others were proud to admit that they wanted to be financially superior to those who they felt had downtrodden them... with a typical 'I will show them'... driven bent to their vision of success.

“Can I come in, do you think?”
I asked who was there at the house, a small terrace, 'railway terrace', that my friend Marc, a recently ‘outed’ man had moved into with his boyfriend, a cruise-ship steward.

He gave me a warm hug, and then we both shivered.

“Come in my precious Snow Queen!”

He reminded me that I had a key anyway. I smiled, it was a private joke, for he always saw me in (synthetic) furs, and my so-called ‘cool indifference’ excited him as a person. We always seemed to meet around the end of autumn, sometimes when winter was arriving. It was then that we would ‘hook up’. Due to his role which required him to travel abroad a lot and it was on one of these journeys that he had decided to provide me with a key to his small cosy home, I was friends with his Tabby cat, a creature rather like me...

My residence which I shared with several girls was miles away from the college campus, and he was away a lot, so he had no problem with my using his home, whilst cat-sitting in return.

I told him I wasn’t expecting him home and as I said this I dropped my small cream vanity case with its few essentials onto his foot, as I felt my arm go limp and frowned at myself in his old rococo mirror hanging behind the rather threadworm but comfortable sofa. My face in Winter always appeared the colour of walnuts, but I looked gaunt and lean, something that often happens when I am really busy. His vanity proved that each of us are prey to age and delusions, for there were several jars of face creams, aftershaves and other men's beauty products left loose in his open suitcase laid by the coffee table from his latest trip.

“Can we have a picnic-breakfast?”

“It is freezing, outside and I have just had a hot bath, so I am likely to die out there…” then seeing my disappointment and my lip curl as it does when I am in half smile and not sure if I am on that line between being true to myself or the surface calm that we each have to display, he acquiesced graciously.

“Okay give me a moment, be still my heart, I adore you but I could throttle you”, he quickly accepted my idea, and as he went into the kitchen he flicked the filtered coffee machine on, and set two mugs ready shouting bulletins about his partner, and asking what I fancied for breakfast, but adding that it would be a spartan and austere meal, since he had only been back three days and had intended to be out most of the weekend. His older sister usually dropped by with groceries for him as she ran a small corner health store selling a variety of nuts and pulses.

I stared into the middle distance where day dreams are only half emerging and then I waited until he carried out the coffee mugs, his beautiful hands cupping mine as he handed it to me so that I reached for the handle. He smiled as for a second our eyes met, and we both felt the recognition of knowing a caring Friend... and then he said nervously brushing his almost coffee coloured long hair out of his eyes, “So how have you been?”

I looked up and stared at him for a while, almost in a daze, and then replied crisply, “Just daydreaming, I haven’t been able to concentrate on anything functional or practical for days you know!”

“So has anything happened?”

“Nope, well yes”

“Okay I am listening, oh wait, I will just get my coat”.

He had one of those wonderful camel overcoats, I loved the colour it was warm and almost a deep gold, he always looked handsome and rather like a business man in it. I watched him pull up his collar and then we both walked out into his garden.

As I trotted ahead of him and then waited for him to open the gate at the end of the garden for me to slink through, he handed me a small tissue wrapped gift.

The garden was unusual, sunflowers grew along one side of the garden, and ivy seemed to choke everything else, there was a small wishing well that was purely cosmetic, and three well weathered gnomes each fishing in the grass, with chipped faces, and broken rods. At the end there was a small black gate with a recently painted picket fence that ensured that you did not fall into the stream that was only eighteen feet from the fence. The edge of a small stream that ran at the bottom of all these pretty terraces, was covered in the jewelled stems of purple loosestrife and bracken depending on the season...

The messy lawn was covered with icy frost, and it was only 7.45 a.m, I had been up since six, and was returning from the gym... with the sun just beginning to melt the edges of the bushes where it could shine unhindered by trees or buildings.

We watched as a neighbour came out and retrieved a frozen pair of briefs and socks from the washing line that sprinkled ice on the tabby that was huddled on the lawn watching some small invisible rodent.

We all smiled the surface smile of polite social exchanges, ones where no more would be revealed apart from acceptance of each others space and territory.

I hadn’t noticed the two large cushions from the sofa that Marc had carried with him, and now he laid them at the edge of the stream’s bank, and we both sat down on these, with me bringing my knees up close to my shoulders, and hugging them between staring into the stream that seemed so slow today.

I shared the anecdote that haunted me and he smiled and several times nodded silently, once in a while he would take a strand of my hair and stroke it between long elegant fingers, and at one point as I stared ahead of me, he rested his head on my shoulder and took a long strand of my hair and tucked it into his mouth, holding it through his teeth, until I turned my face down to looked closely into his hazel eyes, and half-smiled the smile that conveyed an obscure message of incomplete thoughts.

I felt the rapture of finding myself closer to some truth inside my mind that I had searched for with a sense of newly-trodden snow therein.

Then I said, “So will you make me some breakfast?”
He released my hair and he smoothed it down over my back and then he took my beret off my head, shook it, and smoothed it too, and placed it back onto my head tidying my hair which had ruffled as he had removed it.

‘”I will see what I can do…”

“… and would you make sure that whatever you bring me is given to me in a memorable way, I don’t care what it is…. I just need to eat something prettily presented, and can we have incense sticks here, at any rate I want to remember today as long as I live, I think I have learnt something and I want to cherish the moment… I just don’t feel like talking, I just want to sit here and think.”
Unchained thoughts, uninterrupted were my favourite kinds.

He smiled, and he repeated, “I will see what I can do….”
In the distant the smell of coal and wood burning reminded me of the romance of a fireplace and for a moment I felt the realisation that being there, in the cold early morning was an imposition.
Despair would always crowd my thoughts, when I felt I wasn’t somehow being productive.

Within fifteen minutes he returned, with a tray, which he laid on a small wooden bench that was inside the fence, behind us. He came back over to my side, and I watched him light the sticks with long matchsticks that were blue tipped and from Egypt. I pocketed the matchbox and he smiled when he saw me do so…. I have always loved matches and matchboxes, for many of my poems have been initiated on them….

“… No, don’t take that one, you already wrote on it for me….here look”
“So I did”.
I shrugged.

Then he reached over the small wooden picket fence and picked up the tray, and laid it down in front of me.I smiled, he had made more coffee and the toast was cut into little men with a gingerbread-men metal cutter. He had buttered them and some had marmalade and some lemon-curd, and others still had strawberry jam… the final ones had blackberry conserve smeared on them. He had used chocolate and milk buttons to decorate these with eyes. As a final touch he had used a spray cream to dress some in frocks and to give others beautifully wild snowy ‘Afros’. He looked proud at his own creativity. As he waited for me to take one, I reached for his face in both hand and gave him a big kiss on the forehead.

I smiled broadly, and he said, grinning back, that the jams were from the hotels miniature complimentary jars.

I nibbled on these and stared back into the middle distance.

“Why the incense sticks?”

“I just wanted to remember spring; I miss its scents and newness - it seems so far away now”.

“I see”.

I then remembered the small gift, and I used my teeth to tear it open, then smiled when I saw that a small bottle of 'Joy', a rather lovely perfume fell out, I opened the beautiful bottle and had no idea that I would only know one other woman for the remainder of my life that wore it, she was the beautiful mother of a friend.

Then we waited for spring to return… shivering at the urgency with which we both knew I wanted to meet with it again, for I longed for it with a deeper sense of yearning than I knew how to express.

At some point I noticed that he had placed a wrapping around my shoulders, and shivered noticeably even through the beautiful black shiny Astrakhan (polyester, not fur) that I felt enclosed in… and in those deep thoughts, I had dropped a woollen glove in the stream and it was about thirty feet down caught on some frozen branches that dipped into the silvery sparkling, thawing stream.
He patiently let me free my thoughts silently out into the space ahead of me and then when I began stirring from my daydream he smiled and gave me a warm hug, and said… “Okay?”

I watched my glove free itself and drift out of reach forever, I did not feel I needed to retrieve it.

“Yep,” I replied, and followed him back to the house dragging his queen sized duvet across the wet frosty lawn….



.... Were your thoughts interrupted when you really wanted to daydream today? ...

Words

My Friend Jeff Kosiba the poet/writer wrote:

.....The dark of night is when lonely tortured souls
venture out into an unchanging state of total black,
and at least to others,
their tears remain unfelt and unseen......

credit> MoonSpell


Jeff recently launched his new book of poems: "The voltage of illusion", and is based in Cleveland, USA.

Words in email from him leave any tigerfish gasping for more air, as if he offers oxygen to those struggling to breathe. I read his words, and stared into the middle distance, and wondered where he was when he was inspired. His eyes are electricity themselves, they peer into your face as if he has an electric light-bulb searing at you.

Some people 'hurt' your life, as their words are chosen to harm. Others gift your life as their tender words are chosen to quell fears, possibly seeking to find within you the very source of your strength to surmount those fears...

Others again show careless disregard - for them each word uttered is one of haste and ill-chosen to dispel you as one might an insect.. a back handed slap. They have no comprehension of their own insipidness in the face of true strength, even as they conspire towards generating fear and sickly condemnation.

To any rational, logical being, cruelty has a source, some deep rooted pain or trauma that drives some inadequate creature to shove their fist into your face as they drive their criticism into your soul with the same over sharpened nails they might use when pitching their tents for battle.

Those with integrity stand before them with broken sword, cracked shield, and an appeal to the Gods for their assailant to be blessed with maturity and compassion, before striking their final blows in the name of their blessed angels of love.

Do those that will strike you, look you straight in the eye when they dispel their cruelty?

Do they hide weak fractures of their misfit identities in arrogance and spite?
It is with acidic, vitriolic sarcasm that they may incite you to reply.

How is it that for so many when they themselves hurt it is as if you showered them with broken glass, the expulsion of cruelty and the fuse that has been lit is one of rage and demonic volcanic ego...

Then there are others for whom, softness is their only shield, and when they are hurt they withdraw to lick their wounds, one wonders, are they less able to defend their own fragility?

Upon discovery, I am at once at their knee, waiting to march forward to protect them, I feel the sense of mission and purpose rise within me to respond on their behalf. Naturally, then I am attracted to the same strength of purpose in others, those who give no quarter to the ignoble.

Spending a moment with a friend recently, someone who needed coaxing to open up and share the extent of his broken wing, I felt as if I were tending to a small thrush that had flown into a glass window and fallen heavily to the concrete patio. When you run out to lift it you immediately gasp for air. It is so still and yet you can feel it's heart in you hands.

Your fingers tremble to spread it's wing, unsure of where to begin.

The steps that are taken always seem to be so small. Patience is possibly the most difficult virtue for those of us that require immediacy in our requests.

I am not sure, can I do anymore? ... I ask out in a whisper, into the Universe, that question defeats me always.

Who would really know? The answer never comes to me.


.... What question is left unanswered for you?....

"Love has no Reality, Without any Sacrifice..."

[Photo Credit: Tony Stromberg, title, "Fierce Grace" ]

"Love has no Reality, without any Sacrifice..."

I was not born to survive under law

I WAS CREATED TO LIVE IN FREEDOM.

I wait for the hand to hold

Of a heart that is

With mine to own.

Please don`t find in my words, anymore than you need, at the moment you read.
The Spirit takes order from chaos.
Please I am only as you want for freedom love has me, to be whatever you need.

You possess a spontaneity with inspiration, that has everything to qualify.

Joy to be as hope I collect your inspiration. As a flower the morning dew.

The greatest gift I have
to give you are my tears
As a summary to beauty
they are faultless.

To own... You are not mine
Until I am your need.

It is not your attention that I seek but your blessing to see that I do applaud.It is not a desire that I have but for you an inspiration that I do write...

But gone as that ray of light that danced on the brook.

These lines ... written by writer: Simon Auchterlonie

I like to consider my Friend, the compassionate writer: Simon Auchterlonie, an Aries with divine purpose and humanity, a water-bearer.

I am not sure how many individuals truly appreciate creative written self expression... I have had friends tell me they abhorr reading.

It is a statement that is alien to my soul.

Then there are others for whom the written word, the sentence that has been generated from their emotions and triggered by inspiration seems to comes from an outer source that I like to consider a miracle.

That is really how I feel about inspiration... it is something that sets us apart from the animal kingdom, maybe it sets us apart from other beings in the Universe?
The need within us to trigger a response in others, or even an emotion or thought, may be frustrating, or even overwhelming.

What about those who want to share their words... without a need to achieve perfection? A need to be read, with kindness, and perhaps comprehension, or perhaps merely acceptance, perhaps this is what drives it. I am always in awe of those who request only the right to express themselves, without ego, but with a sense of awareness that through their art, their life is freer, and their heartbeat is heard to beat faster, as they soar to through imagination to be released.

Simon is one of these individuals... if I look to inspire, whilst aspiring, he is 'expiration' sending forth a breath... a whisper of words that must be released from inside him.... to a True writer in the keen sense of the word. Through a Friends suggestion, I joined a free dating site, in the hopes of meeting new connections: ideally individuals whose pulse was on my beat... I wasn't interested in dating, just the potential enquiry that enables friendships... and possibilities of new dialogue, fresh and insightful from all corners of the world...

When I heard those words, finishing with 'Bless you...' I was overwhelmed, with admiration.
He sounded exactly like my mother... she speaks like this frequently to me, encouraging and over extending herself beyond her means for her children.

One day out of the blue, he tasked his Friend Tim, an Oxford mathematics graduate, to sort out a state of the art, gift for me. Although, several times I found gentle ways to reject his offer, it was an overwhelming offer, he went ahead anyway, and carried it out, execute the task with diligence, purpose and in the process he was instructional, I learnt that the beauty of real humans as beings is their capacity to love others unconditionally and then to make sacrifices that they can ill afford to make.
He certainly has done so, and I cannot measure the value you can place on the gift of love. It isn't the item, it is the quality of the intention, the purpose it is intended for and the reason one makes the gift.

He made it clear that the gift was to be collected from Tim, so that he could show me his workmanship, and that beyond that, he expected no more than the promise that I would continue to write and enjoy doing so with additional tools that felt an intense need to supply.
You often hear of strangers who will without any hesitation extend themselves to you... I have written about friends such as this in MUSE... people like the Jaguar, Sandeep, or Susana... those that take a step away from their own journey to make a sacrifice on your behalf, and push you a little on your own journey - either in the right direction or pull you so that you can lean on them on theirs... Others are water, cup bearers...

Simon is one of those, his kindness reminds me of the beautifully inspirational moment in the Bible when Jesus is given a cup full of warm water... whilst carrying the cross. Amongst the usual, one struck me as different, in fact it stood out, email from Simon... He asked only to be read.

He never asked to meet me, nor for anything beyond a person, to express the most subtle, and emotionally stirring lines. Each mail was completely unique and unusual. He did not try to impress me, nor over rate me as a person or underrate me as a woman. His famous uncle was Hulme... the Poet, writer... and Simon clearly has similar qualities of sensitivity...
There was always a sweet thank you from him.
'Thank you...' what does that mean to me? Who the hell was I? I never quite understood what I could say that would equalise the obvious time spent in careful consideration by him to share his feelings about life. "Remarkable", I would say aloud.

Then as I filled up the kettle and prepared a brew...

Whenever, I read the words of the new connections I was making, I would smile, to myself, feeling how amazing it was that this small window into their lives was allowing me to share simmering surface waves of ideas and emotions that engulfed their shared moments.
Some of the words would mingle with my thoughts, the spoon stirring them into my tea-cup, and as I would lay the spoon down in the saucer... I would carry it outside, dropping the spoon into the sink, submerged by the lines I may have read and now that made me think, about how it must have felt to have written them.

Gentle murmurings of one's hearts tremors just fill our trembling fingers when we have to hold something fragile in our hands...

We despise those who are destructive, and wish to vanquish our demons, sometimes only with kindness to ourselves and those we consider alien to us. But what if we can just be kind?
I cannot wait until he has his work published - and if he doesn't do it in his lifetime, I will be proud to present it for him. Sometimes... I come home from the gym or work, and in my inbox is waiting a gift... it is Simon... no difficult queries or requests... just the simplest most sweetest open buds of prose, crafted not from any kind of structured methodology, but from within his heart, and soulfully each offered with a humbleness that astounds me.

When your eyes glance over another human's words to you, (and when it is personal, really directed to you, and only you...) ... it is difficult to express aloud what it means to know that someone has taken your personality and then enveloped in their own love for your persona... they don't know you, they may never meet you, but here (perhaps even) they are falling in love with something that may or not be a part of you are to yourself. If it isn't love it is something minutely like it, affection, a comforting sense of belonging, and caring, and then the urgency of looking forward to the light-heartedness of laughter and witty repartee that can arise from mutual comprehension of different life adventures.

Then there were the ones who said.... 'Let me know how you got along at your meeting... '
How wonderful to share an anecdote, and have some feedback, some insight, or even guidance.
When they have gone to some trouble to express their feelings to you, whether it is about their lives, their family or those that they felt they lost through heartbreak, it is only the feeling that you are helpless to do more than comfort them that jolts you to how fragile we all are in Life.

When you share the same, you realise quickly, that the pulse on our wrists is the same.
A few lines... the expression of which is to the heart... the expectancy is nothing... there is no question of requiring a response. It is simply enough to have read it. This is all that is asked of one. When you read the words, it is more than a gift, it is the painful jolt of lightening-stricken broken bark and the doves that died in terror, torn in the branches... Something that reminds one of the excitement of living and then the beauty of the surviving fragile flower that somehow the storm took pity on and left trembling the wind. That is the real gift, from Simon, his total humility... I have never met him, but then he has never asked me to, he presents a simple honest photograph, and the smile that looks up to you is quite lovely. A gentle person and eyes that sparkle despite whatever Life's assaults have made on him. He talks of women as 'ladies'... and he is good natured, and reminds me of a small child who has some humble offering of plasticine and twigs that he has fashioned into a dog, and who brings it to you and hands it as a gift, it is raw, it lacks finesse but you want to cry just holding this gift held to you without a need for approval, just love.

Sometimes, like all humans on the treadmill we call survival, I am weary, and as I decide whether to make a cup of tea, or respond as kindly as I can to the numerous emails that began to trickle into a fountain into my inbox on the dating site... '.. Sorry, thank you, but no...' or 'I am just here for 'friendships...Sorry'... to '... You moronic piece of dirt that got left by the dung beetle when it decided to discard you... that is how low you are... ‘(smile, I can be so sweet)... I get the loveliest communications... artists and writers, (such as Antonio, Michael, and Simon).... and even psychologists... (Nathaniel... ) ...

That I think the pure joy of having outlets to be able to communicate about anything from our day to day endeavours to the personal experiences that have formed us as individuals... the moments are special to me, and the mental stimulation that triggers emotional and physical responses to their lives and them to mine is the part that is so fascinating...

When I saw a fox slip softly into the bracken, the green foliage caressing its legs and tail as it disappeared, I saw it's eyes and we looked at each for a brief second as if we knew what it was to escape. The thing that makes individuals special to me is first and foremost the respect that they can show each other and to themselves... Not for me to be the one who thinks that relationships are purely physical, I can easily adore the person who is willing to be honest, and expose themselves bravely to a stranger... it is something I have often done myself.
"Love has no Reality, without any Sacrifice..."

I love my flesh and blood Friendships, and I love my virtual space Friendships... each fills a void that is part of the compass of north, south east and west within me for reaching out and discovering every outlet of imagination and sensitivity... and part of it comes from how far you will extend yourself to others and they to you. There are healthy boundaries that we all need to create around ourselves, but most importantly there are the those that we must place around others with us to protect our Friendships.

When the insects that I love to watch and examine seemed so diligently purposeful, scurrying and grafting... productive and as I learn from their adoption and specificity, I think and hope I appear to the Gods above, the same ... diligently purposeful... productive and instructive. I always protect the ones I love... I believe deeply that such a need to be ethically self expressive comes from the most astounding love I have ever experienced and that was through my parent’s complete sacrifice, and unconditional love.

It presses me to be the same towards others and even though I am often burnt through it because we are not all raised the same, I try to be resolute in my self propulsion through the eyes that look back at me in my mirror, I am Alice in many ways trying to find a way through the cold glass and find that reality window that begs each of us to escape the mundane... Just being inquisitive and experiencing the whole aspect of living ... "Love has no Reality, without any Sacrifice..."

... Wasting each second is simply not my way... Those with the same urgency to live Life with purpose and integrity will possibly find their way into my life to share some of their battles and the injuries of war... Others may just look and we pass as strangers their heads down low, as burdened they are with introspection. I take each situation as fresh and as a lesson.

Strangers are those who have yet to say 'hello'. Great Friends prove it.... unequivocally, just a few sips of water from their cup of humility and compassion. ...

....Will you welcome a Stranger ... such as me... such as him.... or her... in your Life ... with the willingness to treat them as your best Friend... until ... they are not? Perhaps... become a divine water bearer..."