"who to fall back on?"
her arms are folded, her eyes closed. she kneels and chants, her voice vibrating with an almost tangible intensity, causing him to warm up as he walked along in the freezing blustery
winter cold. Since he could not see her, he did not know how to picture her. He only knew that he felt divine presence within his skin. His heart in his mortal chest pumped new vibrant blood.
It all started when he lost his home. He had been living in a studio apartment in Brooklyn, NYC.
He had been laid off from his job, and he had been trying to conceive of ways to pay rent. Since he had arrived from France, he made a pact with himself that he would never fall into the hustle of the streets just to get by.
Life was getting hard. He was an introverted, quiet type and had never made many friends, whom now he could have fallen back on. Fall back on mercy, he did not want to have to do this, but he was left with few choices. He contemplated his next move, as he pleaded with the fates on this evening walk.
In three hours, the shelter he had been staying in was closing for the night, and he lingered before making the long subway ride across town. He fingered the subway tokens in his pocket. Then he felt her again, although he still did not know who or what, she was.
"Joseph, your heart is golden. I have poured rivers of courage in you." He shook his head and made a face, wondering where all this came from.
He had almost reached the dark, choppy waves below the railing, his hands touched cold metal, while the salty stench of the Atlantic ocean hit his nostrils.
He felt compelled to speak now, under his breath, staring across the water and into the night sky..
"the sun is my anchor, the moon is my home, this night sky holds secrets......" he trails off.
He was surprised at the sound of his own voice. He looked about, sheepishly, but saw nobody.
He gripped the metal railing, leaning over like Narcissus, to his own blurry, blue black reflection.
"I seek your wisdom" he whispers to the water. Or, perhaps he had just thought that sentence.
Almost instantly, a response came to his mind.
"What you see in the mirror is only ego and illusion. Learn the night sky, seek your origins outside of obvious and shallow sources"
This feminine voice in his own mind startled him. He jumped back from the railing and shook his head, trying to get rid of the voice as if it were a pebble in a can. But his mind was no can, and the voice was no pebble.
"No, what am I doing here?" he mumbled to no one in particular.
This question broke the spell he had seemed to be under, had not even been aware of until he found himself back in a more normal head space. A veil had lifted, though he had not moved, the entire scene around him now looked flat and two dimensional. The bricks in the buildings and warehouses looked like bricks again, the air no longer glowed with a radiance he could only have described as HOPE.
The feeling of peace and contentment faded. His solitude seemed to wrap itself now, like a cloak around him. He turned, walking back into the concrete jungle, toward the subway.
"Open and Shut"
Joseph sipped his coffee and stared blankly at the ring his cup left on the table.
".....so I asked her why she always had an attitude and you know what the bitch said?" Eileen paused, her eyes flashing and her cheeks flushed, as she looked at him.
He shrugged noncommittally and kept staring, blinking less than she thought was normal.
She took his silence as an invitation to keep talking. She says, 'Because you are too stupid to know the difference. Why should I be nice to you?' Can you believe that? The nerve she has! I wanted to slap the smug look off her dumb face but I got my ass out of there fast. I don't want trouble. Joseph, are you listening?"
Her high pitched voice ran out across the café. Luckily there were other animated conversations going at the same time, so he did not feel to exposed, which was a feeling he dreaded.
He looked directly at her and paused. " Yes, I am." He told her, calmly.
"Well, sometime I wonder about you, you are so quiet, Joey. Why don't you express yourself I know you have so much going on in there." She tapped his forehead for emphasis and grinned.
"I don't have much to say right now." He avoids her eyes now.
The truth was, he did have a lot going on but there was not anyone he trusted enough to tell about it.
These changes he was undergoing internally were complicated and intense, he hardly understood what it was all about. However, Eileen, an acquaintance from his new job, seemed to think he would pour the contents of himself out to her. He was nowhere near sharing any part of him that was significant or vulnerable. She felt so alien to him, and people had been feeling more alien to him in general.
He quickly noted without much emotion that most of his past relationships had ended for this tendency he had to refuse to let anyone in. He withheld himself and when he did open, they complained he was too emotional, too sensitive, complicated. So, now, he chose to keep to himself.
"When I have something to say, I say it." He says to Eileen, quietly, sounding rational. He leans back in his chair, smoothly, running fingers over his hair.
She launches into another round of talking, "Well, it seems to me you almost never say anything and I don't know if that is because you are bored but let me tell you...." As Eileen went on, psychoanalyzing Joseph for his silence, he easily tuned her out.
He retreated into his thoughts.
Part 2
Back at the water's edge again, his knuckles were turning white as he gripped the same metal railing, in the place he first felt he had received what felt to him a blessing, this woman's voice.
He had begun to visit this place often. It was strange to him, having grown up in the Catholic Church, in France. It was there he heard the story of Joan of Arc. He had fallen in love with her story. This feminine voice was of divine origin, he was certain. He had been smart enough not to tell anyone about these experiences. He knew that all the folks he was in touch with had no context for what he was dealing with.
He liked these moments, and was resolved to protect them. At one point, he thought it was the Holy Virgin Mother Mary. Then that did not seem right to him. Next, he thought it was a Saint, so he crossed himself out of habit, until She, the voice, told him to stop doing that because it made her uncomfortable.
He still peered at the water, waiting patiently to hear her again. She was, if nothing more, and He knew she was more, a poet. And, as if rewarding him for his patience and presence at the railing, her voice came in like a crystal clear radio station.......
She:
"Her flame rose up like the sun, terrified
consuming the shadows,
a deafening dream startled the silence
I am split between two selves
two of so many
I am torn in between two masks
but there are more I have yet
to even see
I am split like a tree
falling parts of me
on either side of no fence
asking for wholeness
pleading with the masks I gather
they turn on me and show
their absurdity
none of them fit but I wear them
only free in the silence
when I am alone
the noise in my head won't quit
so I vacate to an empty spot
amidst the roaring crowd
ready to drown all distractions"
He waited for a few seconds after she stopped. He was floored by her accuracy. She had put into words everything he could not, she framed it in the opposite gender but it did not bother him at all, in fact he felt she was making him understand that part of him that was not male. His tendency to see gender as fluid and temporary was outlined by her consistent revealing of his inside experience, downplaying importance of gender while poetically capturing his most sincere feelings.
