"For Harriet
My love for you knew no limits, nor has it dimmed with time.
I miss you more than words can ever say.
Martin Jacques"
Once upon a time there was a woman named Harriet, or was it Henrietta? I don't really know for sure. She went by both, but name is not important. It's just a means for designation, a way to differentiate disparate, discrete entities. What is important here in this story was her claim of possessing a sixth sense and her strange love for me. A word of caution and warning: this story is a work of fiction, a stuff of fantasy and dreams weaved with words. When "un poète manqué" speaks, he invariably inflates, exaggerates, stretches facts; and flirts with truths.
I met her through a mutual friend. I was boarding a room in a house of a woman named Yvette. Renting a room was much less expensive than renting a whole apartment. I always looked for ways to save money, yet I also flirted with financial self-destruction. I was a creature of contradictions. Maybe I still am. But I am not a freak. I don't think so.
A few years ago---five, on a Halloween night, to be exact, with the full moon shining brightly up in a cloudless sky, and at the height of my midlife crisis, I came to believe that I could make a living by plying my poker skills. So I quit my boring, soul-stultifying job by means of an email to my bombastic boss; threw my clothes, a few essentials, and several books into a suitcase; and headed west on I-10 that very night, with my right foot firmly, not loosely, on the gas pedal of a Toyota Camry, while not feeling quite fancy-free. I was heady and anxious at the same time, staking my future---the remainder of my life, on the fickle nature of luck and my knowledge of poker in the gambling and sin capital of the world. I felt an urge coming over me. I just had to get out of Houston on that Halloween night. Maybe insanity was playing trick or treat with my mind on that night, but somehow I didn't really care. All I wanted to do was to leave every façade of stability and respectability behind and head for the unknown and the uncertain. I was shaking with excitement. Adrenaline was pumping. I drove non-stop until exhaustion overtook me and forced me to check into a motel in Flagstaff, Arizona, a resort town high in the mountains.
By the time I made conversation with Yvette, I had stayed in a furnished studio apartment for almost a year on Tropicana Avenue, a ten-minute walk from Las Vegas Boulevard, working harder than I had ever done in my life. But I was happy. I was in total control of my life. I had no boss to report to. I came to work and leave whenever I felt like it. I was no longer an unhappy office slave. I now regarded myself as an independent businessman, living entirely on my wits. In some grander moments I fancied that I was a commanding general and my poker chips were my soldiers. I fought all kinds of battles and skirmishes, employing various strategies and tactics. The objective was to capture as many of my enemies' soldiers as possible, increasing my wealth and respect and self-respect in the process. I discovered that I was hardly the only one in this monomaniacal pursuit of winning and respect. Players all over the world, of all kinds of backgrounds, flocked to Vegas to pursue the dream of independence and wealth. The poker rooms were the fighting arenas and the players were the financial gladiators. The contest was pure Darwinism in its most blatant form. Only the fittest and smartest survived. The losers went back to where they had come from or stayed on and became homeless beggars or thieves and robbers. Former lawyers, engineers, teachers, disenchanted white and blue collar workers, and retired businessmen as well as uneducated but street-smart hustlers all duked it out day and night, 24/7, month after month, year after year. Some rose to fame and became millionaires in a very short time, like Dan Coleman, barely 24 years of age, but already amassed a fortune of $20 million, yet refused to endorse the game despite entreaties from the poker establishment. He said that poker was a very "dark" game and he didn't want to mislead the gullible public. I admired him hugely.
Either I had an incredibly long stretch of good luck or I was indeed good at poker as I thought I was, because by the time I met Yvette I still had plenty of money in the bank. In fact, my bankroll swelled, not by much but big enough for me to maintain a middle-class lifestyle and an air of social respectability. I ate well, dressed like a gent, and worked out at a first-class gym. I was sixty, but would easily pass off for fifty, and had a face that prompted unsolicited comments such as "good-looking", "handsome", and the like.
Yvette and I happened to sit next together at a poker table in a Saturday evening at the Venetian. Previously, as a regular player, she had eyed me from time to time whenever I was in the poker room, but we had never talked until then. She was not ugly, but no raving beauty either. She was past her prime. That plus an obvious fondness for food made her physically not enticing, to put the matter mildly. I didn't think she was a winning player. At best she broke even. But I could see that she had an addiction, a weakness for gambling. Almost whenever I walked into the poker room, she was already there, eyes bleary, and face grim with determination to get back the money she had lost. But that Saturday evening she was winning quite big. She had about $5,600 worth of chips in front of her. Winning made her talkative. She initially made the usual small talks about the weather of Vegas (very hot in summer, but very pleasant in the winter months) and then moved onto personal questions: name, country of origin, length of stay in America, and if I ever served in the Army. She was excited to learn that I was of Vietnamese descent like she was, separated, and educated. We at first conversed in English but quickly switched to Vietnamese. From her diction and syntax in both languages, I could surmise that she didn't go to college. She proudly disclosed that she had been a "business" woman (restaurant and jewelry) and currently married to an American ex-captain in military intelligence who had to jump through hoops to marry her and then took 24 relatives of hers out of Vietnam in the waning days of the war when the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese troops were closing in on Saigon.
I could be charming when I wanted to. And I decided to turn on the charm that evening. I made eye contact, listened with rapt attention to everything she had to say, and asked discreet, appropriate probing questions. As the evening dragged on and became night, it became obvious to me that she quite liked me. She then asked me where I stayed and how much I was paying for the rent. Eventually she got down to business. She invited me to visit her at her house. She had a big house and was willing to rent out one of the bedrooms for a modest monthly amount.
I showed up at her house the next day. The house was big and nice as she described, in Henderson, one of the tony suburbs of Vegas. The house bordered a golf course and had a sizable back yard tastefully landscaped. I was duly impressed. We agreed to a rent which was a bit more than half of what I was paying. I moved in the following month. I met her husband who was at least 20 years her senior, quite affable but obviously very tired of his wife's gambling ways. He shared his frustrations with me over the beers one night. Four months later, he moved out of the house and into the townhouse of his new love, a Thai woman in her 40's whom he had met at a bar. Yvette sobbingly told me her tale of woe when I remarked that I had not seen Paul around for days.
Soon after the ex-captain moved out of the house, Yvette started hitting on me. I was touched by her affection for me, but I could not reciprocate her feelings. She was not my type. She was coarse, calculating, and selfish. I didn't like her egotism and egoism. There was no evolutionary evolvement to higher values in her. We can only love those for whom we have respect and affection. For Yvette I had neither. She left me cold. She was animalism at its most extreme manifestation. Yet she was self-righteous, thinking there was nothing wrong with her. I felt I had to get out of the house. I was concerned that one night Yvette could not contain herself and might force herself on me in the middle of the night when I was sound asleep (my bedroom door was curiously not equipped with a lock). That would be bad and sad for both her and me. So I told her over one dinner that I had to move back to Houston as my son missed me and requested my being in the same town with him. He had just finished college and would start his first job in a few weeks. I still remembered her reactions when I broke the news. She laid down her chopsticks forcefully on the table and looked straight at me, visibly upset. She enunciated her words and they came to me like blows of sledgehammer.
-Roberto, your son is a grown man. He can take care of himself. You're making good money here. Plus you're happy here, right? So tell me exactly, why do you want to leave Vegas? To get away from me? Tell me.
-No, I just want to be by my son. He said he needed me.
-Bullshit! I'm not buying that. Anyway, I don't want you to leave Vegas. Ever. Because if you do, I won't be able to see you again. But I can't force you to stay in this house. I can see that. There's a lady I want you to meet. If I must lose you, I'd rather lose you to this lady. She and I are part of a network of war brides here in town. I think you'll like her. But please, to win her over, you must not be stingy with your money as you've been with me. I'll call her and arrange for you two to meet.
So Yvette became a matchmaker. And Yvette was right. I liked Harriet right away. We met for lunch. Harriet did most of the talking.
"I am of mixed blood. I am of French, Chinese, and Vietnamese parentage. My parents were quite wealthy. We owned land plus a jewelry business (not "jewelry business" again! It looked like every other Vietnamese middle-aged woman I met had some connection with the jewelry business in one way or another) in a district about 70 miles southwest of Saigon. Growing up I didn't have to worry about food as you did. I had plenty to eat. My parents even had the resources to hire musicians to teach me sing and play musical instruments, but I was lazy. I didn't persevere with the training. Only my sister stayed on with the program. I was not good with education either. I didn't finish high school. I would rather play with my friends than hit the books. Plus, I discovered that I was pretty and charming and the neighborhood boys liked me. They flirted with me, sending love notes and presents. Worse, I was bursting out with sexuality. My body was crying for fulfillment. Soon, I fell in love with a lieutenant of the Rangers stationing in the district. He was quiet and good with singing and the guitar. My parents were relieved to marry me off. I soon had two daughters with the lieutenant who was later promoted to the rank of captain. People in the village looked up to him and to me. But to my sorrow, I found out marriage was not cracked up to be what I had thought it was. My husband was often away fighting against the Vietcong insurgents. I heard rumors he was sleeping around. When confronted, he admitted that the rumors were true. He said the girls were still in high school and they threw themselves on him. He couldn't say no! He didn't know when he would die, being in the thick of the war and all. He might as well enjoy life while he was still alive. I was mad and crestfallen. I had loved him. I married him because of love. He hardly had enough money to support me and the daughters. My parents had to constantly give me money. I was tired of being a dependent. So when the wife of a major in my husband's battalion suggested that I could make money by getting involved in underground currency exchange and working with the Americans, I jumped at the opportunity. I soon made more money than my captain husband. We drifted apart. I met a young American sergeant at a dance. He fell in love with me afterwards and bought me a 3-carat diamond ring as a birthday present. I was very impressed. I thought he came from a rich family. He told me his brother was a doctor. I divorced my Vietnamese husband in order to marry this big, handsome American sergeant who was obviously smitten with me. When I came to America, I was hugely disappointed. We had to live with Bob's parents, paying them rent. In Vietnam I lived in my own house bought and paid for by my parents. Bob bought everything on credit cards. We were in debt, something I had never been in, and something intolerable to me. So I had to work, but my English then was not good, so I had to work low-paying jobs to help pay the bills. I even was forced to sell piece by piece of the jewelries I had brought with me to make ends meet. I was miserable. At one time I worked as a receptionist for a Vietnamese doctor. He was married, but he made it clear he liked me. He hinted that I should divorce Bob, then he would divorce his wife so he and I would be free to be together. But I didn't really like the doctor. He was short and quite ugly, unlike you. If he'd been like you, I might have jumped at his suggestion. I know, I have a weakness for tall, handsome men. Anyway, Bob caught on that the doctor was hitting on me so he forced me to quit. I stopped caring for Bob. I went to the clubs every weekend. I loved dancing. Men were hitting on me, left and right, but I loved none of them. Was I a bad woman? Tell me. Anyway, I slept with Bob less and less as time passed by. Then the inevitable happened. He found an American woman who loved him and did everything he asked for in bed, including things I refused to do. We got a divorce. I wrangled a monthly alimony of $1,000 from him. I survived on that in Vegas back in the late 1990's . Then a few years later, I ran into an old friend from the village. He was separated from his wife. She lived in Garden Grove in California. He helped me get a job at a casino where he worked as a waiter. I first started out as a waiter assistant and then became a waitress myself after bribing the boss with a piece of jewelry. I made good money from tips. I started saving money for rainy days. The man from the village one day told me he loved me and wanted to move in with me. I thought why not, I would save some more money by his helping out with the rent. Besides, I would be less lonely. But I was wrong. He turned out to be a shameless thief, a chronic womanizer, and a losing gambler. I finally kicked him out six months ago. I don't know where he is and I don't care. He is probably back to his wife. By the way, I am now retired and living off on social security, my pension, and the alimony money. You probably are wondering what happened to my daughters. I left one with my parents. She was married young, had two kids and is now a grandmother. I love her, but I have a feeling that she loves her children and grandchildren much more than she loves me, if she does at all. I took the younger daughter with me to America. She turned out to be my heartbreaker. She broke my heart so many times for her acts redolent of insolence and ingratitude and indifference. She has made it clear that I mean nothing to her. She never bothers to visit me or takes me to shopping although she lives right here in town, only twenty minutes' drive away. Every year she and her Jamaican husband go on a vacation in Hawaii. They have some kind of timeshare arrangement there. They never once asked me to go with them. My daughter is the one who has made me feel very lonely. Do you feel lonely, Roberto?"
I looked at her. Tears were forming in her eyes. I pulled a paper napkin from the dispenser and gave it to her. Her fingers brushed mine. She said softly, "Thank you.". I heaved a heavy sigh and then went into a monologue of my own.
"Lonely? I can write a book about loneliness. I have lived with it for so long that it has become my middle name. But I'm okay now. I think we are lonely only when we want to be understood, accepted, and loved. But if we give up on finding love and we keep ourselves very busy, we won't have time to feel lonely. I was married five times. To this day I don't think I know what marital happiness means. But I've known intimately about loneliness while being in the thick of being married. I hope one day I am able to hold you in my arms so both you and I won't feel lonely anymore."
Harriet and I hit it off swimmingly. We talked on the phone and saw each other almost every day for five weeks before she invited me to move in with her. She didn't let me share half of the rent and the sundry household expenses for the reason that those expenses were fixed and didn't increase after I moved in. I just had to pay for food and drove her around in my car for errands.
I never forget the afternoon we first made love. Without preliminaries, she just took off her clothes and asked me to join her in her bed. She was very patient with me and showed me how to please her. I was glad that I was able to perform to her satisfaction. No other woman had taught me so much about female sexuality. To my delight as time went by, I discovered that under her tutelage, my virility increased although I was approaching sixty-two then and I was losing my hair. I felt that I was rejuvenated. I felt and looked younger. There was a glow on my face and on hers, too, despite the fact that she just stepped over to the other side of sixty. I would also have to say that for the first time in my life I knew what domestic happiness meant. She didn't press me for marriage because she wanted to continue receiving alimony money from Bob. Sure, we had fights, sometimes fierce, long drawn-out battles, because both of us were headstrong and domineering, but invariably we made up and we loved each other more after the fight ended.
She was a strange woman, very much into mysticism and fatalism. She didn't go to college, but she read quite widely, especially about eastern religions and philosophy. From her, I learned of the following:
Importance of appearance: clothes make a man, you are what you dress. Forget about nonconformism and indifference to public opinion. If you dress shabbily, that means you have no respect for yourself. And that means you invite other people to show disrespect to you.
Importance of speech: not only Man is an animal affected by what he sees, he is also deeply affected by what he hears. Think of the importance of music and powerful speeches or heart-rending cries. So when you speak, you must speak well. Pay attention to the delivery (tone and intonation) as well as the content. Be brief and laconic, direct, clear, and concise. Speak softly so people have to strain their ears to hear you. Be wary of using humor. it's a two-edged sword.
Philosophy of life: everybody dies. To live is to prepare yourself for the day you are going to die. Be simple, truthful, and mysterious to others. Be mystical if you can. Be polite, considerate, and urbane. Be cultured. Don't be vulgar. Don't degrade yourself. Everybody deserves forgiveness because everybody makes mistakes. Be gentle. Avoid criticizing others. You must exude cosmopolitanism and sophistication. Don't be a bumpkin. You can be classy without being rich. Don't be belligerent. Act with restraint. Be ready to apologize and ask for forgiveness. Your knowledge and intelligence must be shown only when absolutely necessary. They are like jewelries. If you display them in public too often, sooner than later somebody would harm you in order to get them. Very few humans can tolerate others who are more gifted than them. So silence and amiability are tools for a peaceful long life. Be gentle to yourself so you can be gentle to others.
What are of importance in life are good health, love, and self-sufficiency in that order. Love usually begins with attraction but is sustained by respect. Respect yourself. A true man must be strong enough to support himself. Don't be a beggar. Accept help when you need help, but you must repay it. Be fair.
The above is a synopsis of what I have learned from her. They were distilled from the long talks and exhortations she had with me. They were not exactly her words. She was wise and mysterious yet earthy and horribly profane when she got angry. But I knew she loved me because she refused to take money from me when I came home beaming with joy for having a good day at work. She also refused my offer to have her name on my will. She wanted to add and contribute to my personal wealth, not to subtract from it. Love was to give and give, she kept saying to me. She said her mission in life was to make me become a wiser person. She said she felt sorry that some people in the past mistreated me, showed contempt for me, and used me. She said the fault entirely lay with me for not really understanding human nature, despite all my sufferings, despite all my book learning. She pointed out that I committed a basic flaw in thinking: I assumed other people had the same thinking process as I did and that they looked at the world with the same values and knowledge as I did. But I should have known that, she added, I was never part of the majority. And the majority of humans were truly selfish, vain and vicious, power-hungry, hypocritical, delusional, and fearful of facts, truths, and logic, she concluded.
We had stayed together for almost three years when one morning, out of the blue, she woke me up and solemnly delivered her "predictions":
"Roberto, honey, you only imagine things whereas I actually see things and know things, not only in the present but also far into the future. I don't know whether that ability is a gift or a curse. But I want you to listen closely to what I am going to say:
First, I will die soon. I don't know exactly when, but no later than six months from now. I will die in my sleep. I don't want you to be devastated and grief-stricken when that happens. No death is really unexpected or meaningless or untimely. Everything happens for a reason. It's always planned and preordained. We can feel and see the future if we open ourselves to it. Just like when we first met, we both knew right away we would quickly fall in love, and our love would be intense and incandescent. By the way, here's the key to the safe in the bedroom closet. Everything in there is yours after I die. I do love you very much, Roberto, more than you ever know or believe. Even though I know I'm a dead woman within six months, I know I'm going to love you forever.
Second, within a year of my death, you will meet a lady who is much better than me in terms of wealth and learning, who will love you as deeply as I do. She will make you happy and serene in your golden years. But every time you're with her, you'll think of me. In fact, I'll be her. So I won't really be gone. Honey, did you hear what I just said?
Third, because of the love of that lady---my love really---your strong constitution, and your ferocious will to live, you will not die until you hit 99. She---I really---and you will die within weeks of each other."
Of course, I humored her by listening attentively to her "predictions" but I didn't buy any of those. They were all hocus-pocus and mumbo jumbo to me. I have always regarded those who traffic in predictions and prophecies, the so-called "prophets" as charlatans who take advantage of human predisposition to superstitions and wishes and far-out dreams. To me, Nostradamus and the like, including their "interpreters", were outright fraudsters. (The so-called prophecies were never in clear, unambiguous, specific language. The "prophecies" were always in vague, opaque language so they can mean whatever the hell the "interpreters" take them to mean). And those who believe in them are downright stupid and/or delusional, in my not-so-humble opinion. I always shudder with disgust when I read or hear about prophet this and prophet that. The word "prophet" has long been abused. We called certain historical figures like Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad as "prophets" instead of plain religious and political leaders, for no other reason than to invest in them, to shroud them with an air of "divine" connection to facilitate the brainwashing of gullible and stupid converts. I grant that we could extrapolate the present trends and guess what the future will be if the variables stay the same within the same parameters. But I don't believe in pinpoint predictions of the future. I don't believe there are humans who possess that ability, otherwise all self-declared "prophets" and "fortune tellers" would be enormously rich and powerful. They would corner the market on lotteries and all games involving chance. It must be noted here, however, that the "predictions" of Harriet, unlike those of Nostradamus and the like, were couched in clear, specific language.
My rock-hard rationalism got a jolt when true to her words, exactly 180 days after Harriet uttered those fateful words to me, I found her in bed cold and stiff with rigor mortis one Sunday morning. It was an eerie sight of her lying there, mouth agape, face ashen, and eyes open and unfocused. I was shook up. I frantically fumbled for my phone.
I didn't bother to inform Yvette of what had happened to Harriet. Yvette had given up on me after several futile attempts to drive a wedge between Harriet and me. I no longer frequented the poker room where she was a regular.
The ceremony was brief. Only Bob, her daughter, and I were present when Harriet was cremated . Bob and I cried our hearts out, but her daughter did not. I elected to keep a jar of her ashes. It is now on the altar along with her photo taken in her prime, her mother's photo, and those of my parents. Every night before going to bed, I do the Yoga cum meditation routine. Then I light up the perfumed incense, take out a little polished granite stone ceremonial cudgel and strike it against the bell ten times then softly call Harriet's name along with the quotation at the beginning of this story. I don't believe that Harriet's soul still exists so that she could hear my voice. I do the incantation routine because I love her and I honor her daily routine when she was still alive. She used to pray for me in earnest every morning prior to my leaving for work. I do the routine because I feel peaceful when I do so. The chiming of the bell when it is struck by the stone cudgel reverberates throughout the condo, reminding me of her presence, reminding me of being fortunate enough to be loved by a remarkable woman, who taught and showed me what true love and ecstatic sex were really like. I have become a more rounded, more balanced, and happier person, thanks to her. I know I was a lucky man.
After Harriet passed away, i went through a daze, feeling unanchored, lonely, and lost. The only woman in this world who really understood and cared for me was gone. I stopped playing poker for a month. When I resumed, I found out I lost the passion for it. I played fewer hours and I got bored and tired quite easily. I still won but only enough to cover living expenses. My bankroll no longer was increased by the poker winnings as before. It was now only augmented by social security benefits and pension payments. Nonetheless, I had enough money to live comfortably till the day I would have to die. At least I hoped so. I took up writing and traveling to pass the time.
I met Cherry, an Irish woman living in Chicago, on a cruise. She was a few years younger than me, she said, but I had a feeling that she was fudging the figures. She had never been married, she claimed, but I also wondered about that. Regardless, she was educated, spoke (I loved her Irish brogue to the point my own English is now tinged with that) and dressed well, and kept her youthful figure---quite an accomplishment for a woman of her age. Food is important to our survival. We eat to live, not the other way around. Obesity is an obscenity. It throws evolutionary development out of whack. It makes obese humans appear more as pigs than as humans. Nothing exceeds quite like excess. Overeating is not only unhealthy, but also self-degrading. A truly self-respecting person does not degrade himself. I once knew a fat woman. Out of the kindness of my heart, I urged her to eat less. She countered by saying for some people, her included, obesity was caused by glandular disorders. I said, "yes, I heard about that, but in your case, it is plain gluttony, not gland. I've seen how much you can eat." We must take ownership and responsibility for own actions. We must not shift blames. The same woman told me she would be okay because God would always take care of her. That kind of logic always ticked me off. So I wryly remarked that she must be really special while six million fellow Jews of hers who perished in the Holocaust were not. With my "infantile, primitive strand of logic", I strongly and loudly assert that if there were a God, that God must not be discriminating, otherwise He would be just a projection of Man's longings, desires, and wishes. Man is a clever animal. Man would do anything to survive. If he must sacrifice logic and self-respect in order to survive, he would readily do so. Most humans do, anyway. I always ask myself if I am like most humans. We don't know who we really are and what we are made of until and unless we are tested. I further submit that most humans think they are better than they actually are. Self-inflation while engaging in denial and self-justification, is something lesser humans do day in and day out. The world will be a better place if those humans cultivate more self-awareness and learn to be more honest with themselves and with others. Truths terrify most humans. They cannot deal with truths because that requires self-confrontation, an ability to come to terms with pains, and a capacity for change. So most humans live from one day to the next---without zest, without a program for self-improvement---"until the last syllable of recorded time".
As I interacted more with Cherry---a Catholic, of course---my respect for her increased after I observed that she was generous, compassionate, honest, pleasant, and not unnecessarily and absurdly self-impressed like other much less accomplished women I happened to know. She looked rich and acted as if she had grown up among wealth and splendor. She said she had inherited quite a bit of money from her parents. She wanted to appear mysterious and I respected her privacy. Unlike Yvette, I was not the type who wanted to pry into another person's finance. It was bad form to do so. Money, I learned a long time ago, was the prime reason for divorce and personal conflicts. It was also the quickest route to get to the bottom of another person's heart and character. We could tell who the person is just from the way he handles money. Love of money, love of power, and having a colossal ego are dead weights that drag the unaware to the bottom of the sea of sufferings.
I realized I was standing on slippery ground when I wondered if I kept going out with Cherry and if things got serious between us, I might have to become a Catholic, at least in form, as she kept dragging me to church and I started experiencing a kind of serenity amidst the singing and incantation that I had not experienced before. I would never subscribe to the Catholic dogmas and doctrines, but now I would understand the faithful's strivings to understand the meaning and relevance of their existence. I also wondered how she remained unattached for so long. Surely, there must have men who would find her desirable. By our third date, I made up my mind that she must be the lady Harriet "had predicted"! So far I have not noticed anything about Cherry that would turn me off while I might already disappoint her. I have not even attempted to kiss her yet despite her subtle signs of encouragement. On the other hand, I probably have imagined things. The way I look at the situation is like this: if she likes me and cares enough about me, she would let me know, eventually. But frankly, I am not too worried about that. Qué será será. Love is Fate. It must be spontaneous combustion. If work and effort have to be put into it, that kind of love has no beauty nor magic. Anyway, after the leave-taking at the end of our third date, I took out my iPad and hurriedly jotted down the following words in my notebook. I will never show them to her. Doing so would destroy the magic of what I feel about her. While I don't believe in predictions and prophecies, I have faith in the magical realism of imagination and dreams. Life would be too dreary otherwise.
"Silent Snow, Secret Snow
The S by the power of 4 was the title of a short story of Conrad Aiken that I read almost five decades ago. I borrowed it for what I am going to say about what transpired to us, rather, more precisely, what hit me when you took my hand into yours on that fateful Wednesday morning.
You probably reached out and held my hand in a friendly gesture, bereft of any ulterior motive, but to me that moment when our hands intertwined---no longer than perhaps the all-too-brief three seconds---marked the quickening of my senses and sent me to a dreamy, wishful realm of dreams and fantasies.
From that moment on, my world has been filled with a soft, secret, and silent snow where I would be the only person who knows of such snow. Don't you know I wished I would have had the audacity to draw you nearer to me then and there and hold you tight and whisper softly in your ears that I had waited for a long time for a moment like this to come? I always feel peaceful yet focused and strong when you are around. Each night my reverie of you is like the landing of late winter's snow on my secret soul. There are times my longings for you manifest themselves in an aching tumescence in the morning that both makes me proud of my virility and painfully lonely at the same time. I just let the tumescence subside and try to get back to sleep. If sleep plays hard to get, I would get up, get dressed quickly, and head for the gym to work away my desire for you while wondering whether Harriet's second prediction ever comes true. Time is tickling away. Her second prediction has an expiration date in a month. You remember Harriet, don't you? I told you about her and her predictions in our first date.
Regardless, I think I love you, Cherry. I'm taking back what I just said. I know I love you, Cherry. And I loved you, Harriet. I really did. And I always will, till the day I die. I don't feel conflicted loving both of you. Not at all. I am not being greedy. To me, the two of you are inseparable. Meanwhile I'm feeling strong, focused, and disciplined, like an invincible spy in a thriller movie, like an intrepid hero in a Walter Mitty story. The world looks fresh and splendid once more. My blood is coursing strongly. And I feel warm. If nothing else comes, I still have the memories of our times together to sustain me in the years to come.
I have come to believe that hell is not some physical location, as the scriptures for which you have a high regard would like us to believe, but an inability to love. I have heard that Faith moved mountains. I didn't know until two days ago that it was St. Paul, your loquacious and hyper-imaginative and articulate saint, who said so. I don't know if my love for you will move you eventually, but I hope it does. I've been writing almost nonstop since you came on the scene because Cherry, in a manner of speaking, since the moment your hands held mine in such an electrifying, passionate, and loving manner, I have been in a state of mind which must be none other than high paradise."
Wissai
November 5, 2014
Bermuda
Postscript:
A Sixth Sense and Beyond
Wissai
A narrative from the singular first personal pronoun's perspective is fraught and freighted with a singular problem: autobiographical fallacy.
I am not a poet nor a writer of short fiction. I just put words together for fun and release. I write because I feel I have to. I don't care if my words don't cohere or fail to reach a certain standard. The words were written because they had a personal therapeutic value.
Poetry and fiction are the stuff of imagination and exaggeration which somehow has a semblance to reality. This semblance is what is appealing about literature. But I didn't fancy what I have written is literature. Rather, It is associational, free-flowing typing. Dilettantism is at the core at what I do, including living. I wish I had the ferocious will to live as mentioned in the story.
So, as I put the finishing touches to the story, I realized its narrative is like a Swiss cheese. It has a lot of holes: there are many things unsaid about the characters; who is the focus/protagonist---the narrator or Harried, the possessor of a so-called sixth sense? and most importantly, what is the story "about"?
Rather than rewriting the story and damaging its "structure", the following words perhaps shed some light on the story.
A human's consciousness starts with monism as an infant, proceeds to dualism as an adult and then comes back to monism for those who are metaphysically gifted.
Some humans ("prophets", shamans, meditation practitioners, and lunatics) from time immemorial claim to have more than five senses. Hallucinogenic substances (mushrooms, cacti, juice from vines, and synthetic chemicals like LSD, meth, and crystals) have been ingested or smoked/inhaled to aid the attainment of altered states of consciousness and the expansion of awareness. We humans mock and despise and fear, even hate, what and whom we don't understand. Yet we jump to conclusions nonetheless. Ignorance is a disease and an affliction that ironically is unknown to those who suffer. Ignorance ís bliss. There's some truth in that.
Life, after what's been said and done, is an attempt of self-actualization and pursuit of unconditional love, and rarely of efforts to obtain truths via acquisition of knowledge, reasoning and logic. Most attempts fail, however, accounting for all kinds of excuses, malaise, and even pathological behaviors.
The story was an attempt to address the above issues.
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