I read that (I didn’t write it), and I had an idea.  I thought, Whenever I add someone to my blog roll from now on, I’ll give them a shout-out first, and introduce them to my readers.  I like my idea!

As for the people already on it, in the next few weeks I’ll offer a few words about them each also, and why they’re stars on my page.

I have today added Columbibueno to my blog roll.  If you’re one for short stories – and I’m talking vivid, mooded, that take you away in 3 minutes and leave you there, if you want, or you can go back to work or cleaning the kitchen or whatever you were doing before you decided on a cup of tea and a break.  Just, his stories really will take you away.

Columbi is part of WordPress’ Post a Day challenge (I couldn’t do that!) and also takes on challenges of writing 1000 words about very ordinary subjects.  Like, today’s subject is ‘making a sandwhich’. Um, okay.  I hope you like Vegemite! 

I’ve added Columbi to my blog roll because he’s a well crafted writer never short of inspiration and he always takes me away – that, I really like.

Opening quote, Columbibueno’s words

Image, thanks Wikipedia

Above in the video I read to you, personally, my words below.

I hope you to enjoy.  I love to read… of course, especially with an audience

I was standing outside a take away store on Marine Parade, Cottesloe Beach.  Daniel, in the pram before me, was kicking his heels about and burbling.

I stood to the side of the entrance and watched as people streamed in and out of the store.   Young couples.  Teens straggling.  Two boys about 12 years old, with ice creams.  They had walked in chatting and joking, and emerged in silence, each concentrating on their ice cream cones, taking their first lick, being sure not to knock the head off with their tongues.  They ambled across the road, toward the ocean.

I felt very alone.  I felt invisible.  No one made eye contact.  They were all engaged with each other – each had an other.

“Ba BA ba bum.  Ba bum BA BA BA!”

Even Daniel was happy in his world.

Chris had very disturbingly told me that keeping some piss in a cup next to my bed, to fling at invisible entities, was the last he could offer me.  I was horrified at the suggestion.  It seemed not only absurd, but also out of the ballpark.  What had piss to do with unseen forces?

“Even you have your power too,” he’d said.

“You can’t be serious.  Urine isn’t power, it’s waste product.”

“It’s your concentration, it’s your essence.”

I wanted more understanding of his theories, but as you usual Chris told me he was busy; too busy to linger upon anything which may not benefit himself.  When I’d hung up from him, I was completely at a loss.  Would I actually go to bed tonight, a cup of urine by my bed, ready to fling about?  I didn’t know.  I was tortured by lack of sleep, and trying not to lose my grasp on reality.  Sleep deprivation, truly is torture.  Absurd as Chris’ idea sounded, if it would stop me from being woken 3 to 4 a.m. by various energies, I would do it.  So it remained, whether or not to do it.

My father used to keep an empty ice cream tub next to his bed, and I would hear him piss into it during the night.  He was too lazy to walk the length of his room, open the door, walk the two steps of our passage, and through the kitchen to the toilet.  We so quickly become feral.  It’s not that pissing into an ice cream tub through laziness is feral, but the convenience – that mentality is the first step.

It is no wonder that to brush your hair and teeth, to wash your face in the morning, is a sign of self-respect.  It is the most basic effort in care of self/hygiene.  And so readily, it is the first effort we cease to make about life when gravitating powerlessly toward depression, or other illness of the mind which identifies with not being worth the effort.

Aunty Betty always made us wash our face in the morning.  The water was always cold, and shocked.  It was not a pleasure.  But it did become a habit.  Then living with dad from age 10, I went from following Aunty Betty’s rules to the liberty of being neglected.  Dad bought food irregularly, dependent on his betting habits, and washing our clothes was a dedicated effort.  At first I washed daily and changed my underwear daily, because it was my habit, but there was no basket to drop it into and have it returned to me clean, dry, folded.  So my dirty clothes piled on the floor, it apparent that I myself would have to wash them – when I could be bothered.

I adapted by wearing my school uniform for a week or two before scrubbing it; jumpers for months; underwear three to four days; and my bed sheets I could not be bothered washing any more often than once a year, if at all.  I actually do not remember washing my sheets at dad’s, ever.  But I have found over the years that my sisters remember some things I do not, and vice versa.  So in all reasonability, I am guessing that in the seven years of my destruction of ego in my father’s household, I must have washed them at some time.  I know my Filipino stepmother, Gloria, did when she arrived; but I cannot remember washing them myself.  Interesting, what stays with us and what does not.

Daniel’s gurgles were life and joy, vocalized.  He was kicking and reaching out as if trying to touch everyone who passed.  If not restrained by his seat belt, I imagine he would walk/crawl down the road reaching up to the people, smiling, bubbling, expressing, shining.  He was simply beautiful in his simple existence.  Yet I felt so low, so tired, so alone.  Everyone had someone.  Yes, I had Daniel, but I was Daniel’s keeper.  I was the worker, the keeper togetherer of our lives, and I was not feeling kept together well in my self, at all.

Standing on the beach strip of Cottesloe, I was all the miles away from my father in Melbourne that I wanted to be.  Yet I had created for myself, isolation.  Now with a child, it is imagined I would run to the group of people known as family, but I felt no sense of family at all.  My sisters and father thought I would return to Melbourne because I was pregnant but I knew, just knew, that being in their fold with a baby in my arms would not miraculously change the nothingness of relationship I had with them.  I felt no intrinsic closeness; only association by past, plus care at their fate, knowing they were born into the same circumstances as I was.  But we didn’t entirely go through it together, which would create a bond.  My family know me not, and I as little them.  When a vehicle’s parts are damaged, it may still trundle down the road, admittedly wobbly, and appear a whole vehicle/family, but really the pieces are separated and separating, ready to break off.  I broke off long ago.

As for my father, I am repulsed by him, and can hardly forgive that he brought me to the edge of death – that same point my Mother had reached – where I poised in will and wish to kill the being that I was; the teen, Noeleen.  To feel that the pain, abuse you suffer is so insurmountable that the only release is death, and to hold your life in your own hands, your own mind deciding, whether or not to kill yourself, and how you will do it, contemplating how you will do it, how, how, how – for hours, and then return, defeated, to my father’s household, I did, and dependent upon whether I felt I could suffer another strike from him when he would eventually come home, I would either hide in the cupboard to “disappear”, or just crawl into bed, patting the neighbour’s cat, Ghost, in comfort and quiet, but depression, awaiting dad’s inevitable intrusion when he would fling open the door, swaying in all his drunkenness, Ghost fleeing out the window, and – no, I didn’t want to go back there, at all.

I cannot forget dad telling my sisters and me lasciviously of the Miss Australia entrant whose father, it became news, used to peep at her washing in the bathroom.  He had made a hole in the wall discreetly, and watched his daughter bathing.  Dad used to tell us bits of news like this, the newspaper gripped in one hand and the other gesticulating.

“Metres from home, she was”, he once told us of a girl who was raped, returning from an errand for her mum.  She had gone to the shop and was almost home, was within reach of home, but then was raped.  RAPED, dad would tell us, clearly.

I don’t know why dad told us these things, what he wanted us to think – or fear? – but after he told me about Miss Australia’s father peeping at her in the bathroom, the next time I stood naked, preparing to step into a huge, steamy bath, I could not help but look at our bathroom wall, which was joined to dad’s bedroom wall, and look for a drilled hole.  It was a concrete structure, our ugly Housing Commission house, so a drilled hole would have been obvious.  I saw no hole, but still sat in the bath, disturbed.  Why did dad tell me that?  Why did he labour it, the dirty news item, and put it in my head?  Why?

Daniel had become louder now, more vocal.  He was looking across the road at the people on the lawns under the pine trees.  Families, they were:  together.  United by blood and by loyalty, they were compiling memories, unwittingly, to comfort quieter days.

“MAMA bo bum da bee la!”

With Daniel getting impatient, his arms and legs kicking wildly now, I decided to move.  I began to push the pram across the road, approaching the happy setting of verdant lawn, balls bouncing, kids running about.  A dog ran up to Daniel in the pusher as we stepped up onto the curb.  They were face to face.  The dog’s face was so happy:  its jaws relaxed agape in surely a smile, with saliva dribbling from the corners of his grin, floppy ears hanging, his eyes sparkling.  It smelled Daniel’s hand, outstretched.  I leaned down to be a controlling hand, to make sure the dog didn’t suddenly snap.

“Deppy!” the owner yelled from across the lawn.  “Here Deppy!”

The dog turned and bounded across the grass to its owner; tail erect, wagging. Happy dogs, I thought to myself, I love to see happy dogs.

I was the most industrious in dad’s domain.  He didn’t seem to force Wendy to do chores like he forced me.  I remember he once mowed the front lawn without a catcher, including the nature strip, and I had to sweep it all up into a pile, dump it into the bin.  I greatly resented he didn’t use a catcher, but I did my work.  Somehow, somewhy, I have always had a strong sense of duty.  Once you have attended to duty, then you are free – and when free I walked miles and miles away, swam miles and miles away, and wrote hours in my diary, the words each steps to escape of what I felt.

Daniel was so itching to be freed so I unlatched him from the pusher once we were up on the lawn.  He immediately jumped into life, and again I found ourselves a part of a scene, a setting, but myself so desperately alone.  I looked at the mothers and fathers in togetherness; brothers and sisters in togetherness; groups of women lying about, sunhats shading countless lives, that they shared with each other, told, got things off their chests.

A father swooped down and collected his two year old daughter, with as much affection as I pick up Daniel myself.  It was like I was stabbed in the guts.  Somehow, to observe this hurt me greatly.  That unitedness of family busy before my eyes, I have never felt. I wanted it.  Yet, I did not know how to create it – much worse, how to create it for my son.  How on earth could I create a sense of family when I was but one woman in a flat, not even a cat – and everyone else, those people defined as family, were thousands of kilometres away.  Daniel would want a sibling, surely; deserved company other than me and my fissured mind. 

The father joined the mother under the shade of a tree, where the mother fixed the toddler’s suncap.  The little girl winced at the cap being pulled down harder on her head.  The mother then rubbed some sun cream on the little girl’s nose and cheeks, and handed her a popsicle.  Father let her down.  She held it, proudly her own, and began the luscious adventure of sweetened ruby coloured ice splintering amongst her teeth, and melting down her throat.  That family-ness, that togetherness; how do they get that?  How is it made?  If it did not come naturally to me, was it then out of my reach; and therefore out of my son’s reach for I had not shown him how?

I ached.  Beneath the brilliant sunshine, dappled, beneath a tree; the Indian Ocean delectably fresh in my nostrils; my precious son delighting in his surrounds, this life he has been born into; I ached.

Copyright, Noeleen

I was in Daniel’s cot.  I was curled over a space where obviously Daniel had slept, but where he now sat, inspecting my face.  I wondered what he saw.  As he would not see “age” per se, for he was not yet conditioned to, I wondered how he read me.  This face before him, unavoidably a portrait of my reflection in this world; what was his impression?  The tiny wrinkles at my eyes which society kindly donned ‘laughter lines’; the turn of my lips up, determined to smile through it all; the hint of my outer lips down, fate befallen; the freckles impact of sun I chose not to defend myself from; my eyes ocean blue now looking at him with love.  Having woken me, Daniel’s next move was to stand up, leaning on my hips for balance.

“Ma ma ma ma MA!”

Was I a work of art, I wondered – a caricature? piece de resistance? stencil of my father’s ‘belief’ in me?  charcoal abstract?  a painting rich in depth but still dripping with paint tears drying?  I don’t know; I should know.

“Good morning, sweet heart,” I said.  Remnants of dreams were stuck in the inner corners of my eyes.  I rubbed them to loosen the debris, let it fall.  My son had heralded the new day.

I reached up and tried to pull Daniel down, to give him an enormous hug, but he wasn’t willing. 11 months old, and so alive and kicking.  He tried climbing onto my hip, to step up to the rim of the cot and make his escape over the edge, but I sat up so that my position no longer aided him. Daniel turned to me, and made a whingeing sound.

“Just a moment, darling,” I said.  “One moment, for Mum.”  But he didn’t want to hear me – he continued whingeing.

Holding the side rails, I guided my great, heavy being to a standing position.  I felt mentally gluggy, and the weight of a sack of sand. I was so, so worn out from night upon night upon night of disturbance.  I stepped over the railing.  Daniel’s arms reached up, anticipant to follow.  I jumped to the ground, then leaned in to take Daniel under the arms and lift him up, over, and place him on the ground.  He whinged – wanted up.  Sigh.  I picked him up.  I punished him by giving him the big hug I wanted to earlier, and kissed him on each cheek.

“Mummy loves you, Daniel,” I said.

His arms outreaching, one bent inwards.  A little hand landed on my head, tiny fingers curled my hair, scrunched it, then let it go.  I felt like I’d been blessed.

Carrying Daniel to the back patio/mini garden, I tried to remember when I had climbed into his cot.  I remembered staring at him sleeping for ages.  I had felt like a sentry watching over a prince.  Daniel: the tiny life I was entrusted to the care of this lifetime.  Spiritually, I had been granted the contract to be his guide to age 18.  Men mattered not, compared to this purpose.  One half of me, before giving birth to Daniel’s spirit, had lived largely driven by my desire for men – their smell, what they released in me that left me (temporarily) sated, their lustful grip of me.  Even a rough grasp of my being, my body thrown upon a bed, entry with all the aggression of invasion, withdrawal and departure after a conversation of sorts; even that I trembled for, in my need to be loved.

I remembered the one and only one-night-stand I ever had in my life.  This one-night-stand, it was a sexual encounter I had no expectations of – no delusion it could lead to a relationship, to someone caring for me, coming to know me over time and consider me worthy to partner, with whom to walk the slow and winding path to our deaths, pointing out scenery along the way, jumping onto life’s carnival rides, scrambling off, laughing and embracing.

My one-night-stand I determined to happen when I was dealing Two-up at Burswood Casino, a croupier being my first job upon leaving the marriage.  It had been months since James the Inspector dropped me, on finding his ex-girlfriend, also an Inspector, wanted him back.  A rookie at the casino and broken in by James, my engagement with him no doubt inspired her renewed interest.  My first love interest post- marriage, I was drunk with newfound feelings, sexual positions and locations; a new man to inhale, savour in the odd hours we kept at the casino – 3 a.m., 4.30 a.m., 2 in the afternoon.  But I was dismissed; my heart tossed aside like a chocolate wrapper, the sweet having been devoured.  With melted me remnant on his tongue, James returned to her.

Daniel in just a nappy, was touching the wet flowers of the morn.  His fingers explored the velvet texture of the petals.  I had to stop him from eating them.

“Bad for you, Daniel, no good” I said, shaking my head.  He looked at me, the decider of fun/not fun, permission/none, venture/depressed reclusion.  He decided to squash them, let the juice perfume his fingers, taste it, and fling dew drops from other petals.  It was magic to see the wonderment in Daniel’s eyes.  Nature, the blessing constant.

That night at the casino, I had just learned from another female croupier what the male inspectors, on high stools, were having an in-joke about.  They looked down upon us and made signs to each other, and I wondered what was going on.

“They try and tell if you’re wearing a g-string or knickers,” she said.

“WHAT?  You can’t be serious?”

“Yep, that’s what they do.  If they can’t tell, they decide you’re wearing nothing.”

“Wow” I said, incredulous.

I looked up at the inspectors.  They had huge grins on their faces.  I, the subject for amusement, with no control over what their imaginations might decide.  What idle, idle minds, I thought to myself; unattractive.

“Your turn” Florissa said, handing me the coins and Two-up paddle.

“Give us yer luck!” the men started yelling – or ordering.

“C’mon Noeleen, you can do it!”

“Make it tails!  Make it tails!”

“Lady Luck, you’re the only one I’d like to – “

“No more bets,” Florissa announced.

Then, just as I had been taught, with that flick of the wrist I dispensed the coins from the wooden paddle and flung them high into the air.  The crowd hushed and watched them flip.  Lives, prosperity, marriages, were suspended momentarily, and then the coins landed.  Amidst cheers and cries of despair, I made the call, and began paying out.

Daniel moved across to another part of the courtyard so I followed him, watching, thinking.   Ever since I can remember I have thought, deeply.  I have been constantly processing my existence, and am still doing it, without conclusion.

“You’re a very different girl in repose, Noeleen,” my Aunty Betty had said to me when I was eight years old and living with her, after the orphanage.  I had been staring out a window, not heard her approach.

“What’s repose?” I asked.

“Never mind,” she said.

And thus by this adult word, that I determined I must find out what it meant, she struck a mark in my years, unforgettable.

He was an Italian guy, my picking.  He had charisma, was very cheeky, and we both talked the same language, our twinkling eyes agreed.  When we finally arrived at my tiny bedsit at the end of my shift, I commented that I must be mad, letting him into my home and not knowing him.  He replied, eyeing the photograph montage on my wall, “I don’t know.  Looking at these, I think I should be afraid of YOU!”  The photo montage was a mess of my life from childhood to present day, including the photos I used to take as a teen, of my large doll.  The doll was literally waist height, and I used to photograph her in all manner of distress – her arms bent awkwardly, tomato sauce slashed across her dress (blood) and the like.  I don’t exactly know why I used to do that, for a hobby.  Satisfaction in expression of emotion, I guess.

The day following being with I-can’t-remember-his-name, I could not linger and lie about.  I had another shift at the casino.  I did not want to kick out a sleeping man, and so left him there.  It was only when I was on the casino floor did I realize he knew where I was, where I would be kept for eight hours, yet I had no idea where he was – could he have organized mates to come in and clean my place out?  Driving home, I gathered anxiety by the mile, and raced upstairs, put the key in my lock.  I felt so relieved to find all of my possessions, and my cat, in place.  I could not believe how foolish I had been, how regrettably I lacked boundaries.  I am glad Mr Stallion did me no harm, but I needed to get a grip on living with some kind of value about me.  Yet how to live with value in yourself, when you feel none, was a true conundrum.

Surprising Daniel and me both, my neighbour’s cat jumped up onto the ledge of the fence.  It eyed us, then placed a paw on the paneling, hesitated to gauge its landing, and jumped down.  Daniel immediately began “speaking” and gesturing for the cat to come close.  He trundled his way toward it, half walking/falling/crawling.  The cat, eyes alert and ears pricked for any sound of danger, stood in the rear grass patch and stared at Daniel.

“Wait, darling.  Wait for puss to come to you.”

Daniel ceased his gait, looked at me.  It sort of fascinated me that Daniel should listen to me at all.  I remembered my fear in pregnancy, fear absolute, that the child to be born to me would not listen, for I the “authority”, I knew, was NO authority.

Regardless of all my lack, fate brought Daniel to me.  And having done, she stood back smiling, as we in the garden figured our lives out.

“Just wait, Daniel. Patience.  Puss will come to you.”

By Daniel’s look, he was in conflict.  He clearly thought that trampling through the grass and flowers to puss would enamour puss to remain still and wait, patiently, for his dedicated pat.  But then, Mum may know something that he does not.   Indecision.  Daniel’s mind ticked over.  Then he decided to trust me, and he stilled.

Puss, having waited for the humans to act as they should, acknowledged our obedience by standing up and, despite looking about and seeing more interesting scenes to be part of, choosing to grace us with his presence.  He stepped through the grasses toward Daniel.  As soon as he was close enough, Daniel touched puss, stroked him, fascinated at his fur.

Puss accepted a few strokes from Daniel before walking across to me – he needed attention from me, too.  So I leant down and patted him.  Daniel trundled over and we together indulged puss with all of our attention – a perfect start to puss’ day.  Daniel spoke to puss and I smiled.  I then squatted down, my son under one wing and puss under my other.

After this, I decided, I would ring Chris and see what he had to say.  His signs had some kind of effect, I guess, but there were still cracks in the velvet black night, and I wanted them sealed.  I did not want a single paw reaching through, feeling for a body to land on, and finding me.

Copyright, Noeleen

The below is in written word, that spoken above.

Night and time:  two inescapable themes of a life.  There I lay in the land of both; in night’s deepest depths, slipping through time.  Night-time.

The stars shone, and on the light they emanated I slid, like a slippery slide, from one to another.  Like a fairy, I felt, wings fluttering up there in the universe – or no, something more credible:  an Angel.  Yes!  With wings expanded, effusing a light of such brilliance it would blind, I hovered above a star.  I was shining so brightly myself, to the humans on earth I would be mistaken for a star.  ‘I’M A STARRRRRRR!’ my mind yelled and giggled, the vibrations breaking out of my head and shooting, like spears of white light, out into the universe.  It was magical, this existence in my head, while my body lay heavy in a bed in Cottesloe.  Magic in my mind, or real occurrence of my spirit, I may never know.

At the foot of my body in my bed in Cottesloe was space, and just past that space a door, open.  Beyond the open door was more space and a lounge.  In the lounge stood normal human effects.  They were not alive in an animated sense, but they did emanate energy – the large wooden writing desk, especially:  a tree lopped, sawn, sanded, bits discarded and dumped into a wood pile to be burned in someone’s lounge.  The divided tree measured and shaped, glued and nailed, compiled, sat in a shop who knows how long, had what life who knows how long, before I stepped into the store that day.

‘That day’ was the day my husband and me were idle.  When humans are idle, they often turn to shops where other idle people gather.  The idle people mill about, viewing items in shop windows, wandering into shops and wishing they could afford something, or buying it on credit card to in effect pay anything up to double for it, in time.  Some idle people can afford to buy the “thing” immediately because that’s their life – their life has ample money in it.  Those idle people are able to cheerfully leave little piles of money in various stores, taking goods in exchange.  Some idle people gather so many things from the many stores, whether by credit or cash, that they have to force room in their car to fit all the things.  These idle people, they’re often in couples or small groups.  Single idle people don’t seem to buy as many things at the shops as coupled idle people – it seems to be a social thing to do, this wandering about shops, picking up goods and leaving money in its various forms.

The idle people with the many, many goods, often feel good when they’re driving home – maybe that’s why they’re called “goods”.  At the traffic lights they’ll stop and think, perhaps, the working week had been worth it, because now they had two more new pairs of shoes to show for it – or a dress or three, more men’s tools, two handbags both 25% off, a few “excellent quality marked down” business shirts, CDs, kitchenware, computer accessories, more food than they need, and so on.  Often idle people will unpack their things at home and, with considerable pleasure, throw out an “old” kettle or pot, hairdryer, thing or other thing, or several things among the things in their home, and they will replace it with a new thing they’ve just bought.  It’s not always that the old thing was nonfunctional or useless, it’s just that the new thing in its place causes the idle people to feel good, for a while – until the newness of those goods wears off and they go to the shops and join the other idle people milling about, looking for replacement goods for the “old” goods, to feel good.

It was one such idle day, my husband and me, an idle couple having just bought too much food, a lot of stuff for his car (he always bought a lot of stuff for his car), and some new clothes for me for work because I really “needed” more clothes for work, when we were leaving the shopping centre and I, his passenger, was staring out the window, looking at the people.   Some people were leaving with their arms full of goods; some were just arriving and yet to wander, choose goods, leave money or add to their credit debt.  I wasn’t actually feeling too good.  The shopping trip hadn’t worked its intended effect on this idle couple – my husband and me – because I could tell he, too, was thinking.  Although he was concentrating on the road, his silence told me thoughts were in his head that he was not willing to share, and it was best we sit and he drive, in silence.

We left the shopping suburb and travelled toward our outer suburb, the suburb his mother the chartered accountant thought it best we indebt ourselves by mortgage, which she was backing us to obtain.  It was less populated, our suburb, and there was no centre for shopping, for idle people to wander in.  So travelling toward our suburb, the odd few stores on the side of the road were obvious.  We had just passed one such store when on impulse I asked my husband could we do a u-turn and visit it.  He didn’t want to – I think he wanted to get home and spend hours and hours on his car with all the new things he’d bought – but I begged him because I had spotted old things.  I loved old things.  They held history, and by that history; energy.  They evoked thought in me, imagination, feeling.

“Please, David, we don’t have to buy anything.  I just want to have a look.”

It’s funny I said “we don’t have to buy anything” because that’s what idle people feel, when they go into a shop – that they need to buy something, to make the whole idle trip worthwhile.  David sighed, and turned the car around.

We stepped into the store and I was surrounded by energy, age, time captured in an old photograph, framed, sitting on an old wooden dressing table.  That dressing table…who had stood before it?  What housewife of what year had opened those drawers and what had she rifled for amongst her nylons and silks?  Her husband not yet home, what secret was it that she kept there, quietly, keeping her sane inside the frame of her life?

And then I saw it.  It was large, of solid wood.  It was L-shaped so I imagined lots of space for all my books and papers.  It was wonderful.

“It’s a bit old,” David said.

“That’s fine with me.”

“It’ll look good with a nice sand and new veneer,” the salesman said.  We turned to look at him.

“How much is it?” I asked.

“We’ve priced it down this week because it’s been there a while and it takes up a lot of space,” the salesman said, putting illusion before the price to try and enchant the idle couple.  “We’re basically giving it away at $235.  It was $500 when it first came in.”

“Where did it come in from?” I asked.

“A deceased estate.”

“Did you know anything about the previous owner?”

The salesman looked at me oddly, as if the previous owner were irrelevant.  No, he said, he didn’t know about the previous owner.

My husband and me had to step out of the store to discuss it, because it was a cosy store jammed with old stuff, and impossible to escape the earshot of the salesman.  The problem was, the store only took cash, and this was difficult for us.  If credit was okay we would have bought it in a second, but cash was a real problem.  Still, my husband was devoted to me and when I said, “I can tell, that’s the desk on which I’ll write my first novel”, he wanted me to dream on, and so he said yes.  We would pay $235 for my dreams.  We had to go and get enough cash, then returned to the store.  The salesman smiled as he waved us off.

With ‘that day’ now far in the past, the large wooden desk sat quietly in my lounge in the still, quiet, pre dawn.  They say the darkest hour is just before the dawn.  I feel at times my whole life is that hour, so may my death be my dawn.

A spread of moonlight lay over the desk, quiet in my lounge.  Stillness, deep stillness of the night, seemed suspended in time.  Daniel was ensconced in dreams, and I too, lying on my back in the semi dark.

Me the Angel hovering above a star, screaming with my mind and watching the spears of white light vibration shoot out of my head, laughing, fluttering gently my enormous wings – I suddenly opened my eyes wide up there in the universe.  In an instant I returned to my body in my bed, where I gasped.  Feet, like cat’s feet – exactly like cats’ feet – ran from my belly button up my sternum, then jumped off.  From nothingness, I felt the land of the feet upon my belly.  I felt the gallop up my body.  I felt the take off.  Immediately alert, I sprang from bed and turned on the light.

Nothing.  There was nothing to be seen, and nothing to be felt.  But I had felt something.  I had literally, physically, felt the weight of paws, about the weight of a cat, galloping up my body.  I touched my sternum.  I wondered, was there at all a light imprint on my body, of paws.  It was the landing that woke me.  The paws landed on my stomach and I having felt that strike, that’s what woke me.  Then awake, I consciously witnessed the gallop and lift off.

I felt bewildered.  I felt mental.  I felt this was too much to bear.  For the spiritual world to have physical impact, this was terrifying.  It was unfair enough I could not see “them”,  therefore not know how many of “them” were in the room, what “they” were capable of, why “they” were there – but now, to physically feel one, this was a new level all together.  I went through to the lounge, where I had left on the light.  I stood, trying to detect an energy, a breath, a whisper, a knowing, a feeling, a sense, a suggestion – but there was none.  My flat was simply my flat, in the middle of the night.  The time was simply 3.19 a.m.  I was simply alone.

I went to the chair at my desk, sat on it and lay my head down on the desk.  With my ear to the wood, I closed my eyes.  I was so, so tired, and tortured by this nightly disturbance of my peace in this realm, on planet Earth.  The first night had been the most horrific with the  energy so alive in my room, so forceful, paralyzing, draining.  The first night I was ruined, then the second night absolutely petrified.  Energies were in my room as if they had gathered and the atmosphere was buzzing with otherness.  Others – others were there, unseen others.

I was beyond tears.  I felt like a zombie.  Automaton.  Ma Automaton.  ‘These, are the days, of our lives.’  No, this was just not liveable.  I had to find the reason, or cause.  I had to expel it, cleanse it, or stop inviting it.  One of those things had to be the answer.  As we had only been at the flat a couple of months, I wondered how long the previous people had stayed – how many had lived here – what kind of people they were – had they experienced anything haunting?  I wondered, even, whether someone had committed suicide in the flat, or died.

I wondered if I could ask the lady upstairs, Sally-Anne, without sounding disturbed.  I was disturbed, in reality – very.  I had to, had to, understand – or know – or make sense of.

I raised my weary head from the desk, looked at the window which led to the back mini garden.  I never drew the curtains as the back fences were so tall, and I liked the moonlight in the lounge overnight – well, normally, when I didn’t sleep with the light on.  I looked at my reflection.  It was so pale.  I saw a line on my forehead, like a ghost itself had sat at my bedside and etched the line while I slept.  Oh, stupid thoughts, I immediately scolded my bent mind, bending more nightly, like a candle lopside, dropping, dropping.  Every waxen tear, more energy lost from me.

I went again to my room, the sleep-out.  I still felt nothing.  There was no energies at all.  I had simply been a ramp for take-off.  I walked the path Chris said “they” took – from my bed, through the lounge, up the brief hallway, to my front door.  I opened my front door, opened the wire door, stepped out.  The foot of the hill driveway is basically at my door because there is a garage right next to my door.  I felt nothing in the air outside but freshness.  Dawn was slowly waking, touching dew drops to the leaves, grasses and flowers, the carpets of earth.  The sun was preparing to shine on Cottesloe, when the world would turn on its axis.  The stars in the sky, a silent presence:  of life.

I felt beauty outside, unmistakable beauty in the mid morning.  It was funny my four walls could hold so much energy of disturbance, fear – how I feared to sleep at night.  And then, step out of the walls, and I felt such freshness.  I had to remember the freshness, the beauty of the life breathing around me in this cool, moonlit moment, and bring it indoors.  The freedom I felt in our home when we first moved in – that feeling was still possible.  It had been replaced, and I needed to switch it back.

I went back inside.  I was shaken.  To have physically felt paws… I would never sleep on my back again, I thought.  Then, standing at Daniel’s cot and watching him sleep, I knew:  inside every prison, is freedom.  I just had to work it out.

Copyright as specified in the video,

Noeleen

Us naked, I held Daniel under the arms and descended him into the lukewarm water.  His tippy toes touched the water and “giggled” – sort of curled in and out and then began kicking, to be let in further.  I placed him gently into the water and sat myself down.  He stood, with me holding him, seeming to not want to sit.

“Aren’t you going to sit down, sweetheart?” I asked, and he looked at me his face all bright with life and newness, shining.  He giggled and spurted out a string of “words”, to the eloquent enunciation and intonation of which I responded, “Well that’s sounds like a jolly good reason… a jolly good reason to sit down!!” and smiled at him.

Daniel laughed and, still jabbering, sat his bottom into the water and started splashing about.

“Oh, no, no, no, Daniel!  Too much!” I said, squinting and turning my face away as water flew through the air, splattered on the walls, my cheek, up and over the bath rim to splat on the floor.

“Seriously Daniel, no.”  I held his hands to still them.  “No, darling.  Messy.  Too much cleaning for mum.”

He stopped, us holding hands.  “Let’s play with the cup,” I said, and took the plastic cup from the bath edge.  Although we’d done it often before, it still held fascination for Daniel to watch me, with slow movement, hold the cup’s base on the water, pull it down so that the water rose up the sides of the empty cup, down further so that the water is almost at the rim, pause for anticipation, and then slowly pull the cup further down so that the water on the outside met the rim and flowed into the space, filling the cup with swirls.  Then, like it was a routine, Daniel reached for the cup which I had let go of and was now full and suspended mid depth of the bath.  He brought it out of the water, emptied it, and tried it himself.  He doesn’t have the co-ordination or understanding to pull the cup down and I have to hold his hands and help him.  When I first did this, Daniel objected, certain he could do the whole “magic trick” himself, but then conceded that mum’s hands guiding his own down, adding the pressure, was the only way.  By this repetition I expected Daniel would learn what pressure was needed to pull the cup fully into the water, to hold it straight as he pulled it down, to be rewarded with that magic gush of liquid spilling into the emptiness, the cup then becoming light as nothing.  One day he would be an adult, I thought – or no, a teenager, and such activity would hold no fascination for him at all.  But for now, we both enjoyed it.  It was indeed fun to watch Daniel’s eyes keenly looking down, observing the cup empty, meet the rim of the water, and with one last pull, disappear into it as the water invaded the empty vessel.

Empty vessel.

We played until the water had just that edge of cool, which meant time to wash and get out.  My clean baby boy, skin olive complexion from my Polish-Irish heritage and his father, Indonesian-Chinese.  I pulled him close and kissed each of his cheeks.  I then lay him on the change table, put his nappy on and a light outfit, then put him into the cot.  Daniel resisted, because fun is no fun when it has to end.  “Just a minute, darling, we’ve got a story tonight,” I said.  This quietened him and he watched me as I looked through the books in my box on the floor – I had a box on its side so it was like a book shelf – and finally came up with one about a dog.  He loved the one about the cat.  It was time for one about a dog.

I couldn’t help but look at the clock.  It was 9.38 p.m.

Sitting outside the cot, I insisted Daniel lay down before I start.  I then leaned against the cot, sort of on an angle half to Daniel, opened the book wide and began to read.  It was a dog’s life indeed.  There was such a variety of wagging tails to meet, scents to detect with their keen nose, dew-touched grass to run crazy through… if only their owner would get up.  The picture showed the owner, Paul, asleep in bed.  “That’s what we’ll be doing soon, Daniel” I said, with hope.

Hope.

Dog nudged Paul’s face which was leaning half over the edge of the bed, with his wet nose.  But Paul only turned over in bed, so his back was facing Dog.  Dog licked Paul’s feet at the end of the bed, but Paul only drew them in so they were unreachable.  Dog then looked around, left and right.  He forgot the leash – he would need that, so he left Paul’s room for a minute, found the leash in the laundry and brought it to Paul’s bedside where he placed it down on the floor.  Paul hadn’t moved.  Dog stood wagging his tail eagerly, Paul still didn’t move.  Dog’s tail wag slowed down… and then stopped.  Paul was not moving.  He knew Paul would be angry if he barked and woke him – he might even push him out the door and close it on him – so he had to decide what to do.

“What would you do, Daniel?” I asked him.  “If you were Dog, what would you do to wake Paul up but not so that he woke up angry?”

Daniel looked at me, his head laying on his side, in the cot.  His eyes were lulled.  This was working just fine.

Dog wished and wished the ticking box on the bedside would make that ring it does almost every morning, which makes Paul get up and get moving.  It normally went off around about now.  He waited for it to ring, and waited, but it would not ring.  Dog decided to put his two front paws on the edge of the bed, standing on his hind legs, and make a kind of a whimper.  Humans were a sucker for that.  So this he did.  The whimper sounded like this – and I made a soft, pitiful kind of whimper, and looked at Daniel.  His eyes looked from the page to me, which seemed an effort, closed for a second, then refocused on the page, but further lulled.

The story continued, me lowering my voice and slowing my pace so that it didn’t sound exciting.  Daniel didn’t make it to the end where Paul finally woke up, stumbled out to the kitchen, put food in Dog’s bowl then stumbled back to his room, closed the door and continued to sleep.  A closed door was final in this household, so Dog ate his breakfast and then sat in a small patch of sunlight near the wide window back doors.  Dog put his head down on his paw and looked out the large doors at the garden.  He watched the sun creep across the grass, causing a shimmer over the lawn as bit by bit the light touched upon every drop of dew, bringing it to life with a sparkle.  Dog watched birds twittering about, bathing in the bird-bath.  ‘It’s a bird’s life’, Dog thought to himself as he closed his eyes and, with little option in the quiet household, fell asleep.

What Dog didn’t know was that that day was the start to Paul’s holidays.  That day they would be driving to a beach – a beach house – where Dog would be able to run miles along the open beach and chase sea gulls and chase his tail for hours if he wanted to, chase after sticks, run into the water and out of it, sniff other dogs on the beach and be patted by happy children.  So when Paul woke Dog up about two hours later – boy, was Dog in for a surprise!

~ ~ ~

Not even wind is moving, I thought, as I stood in the patch of garden behind my flat.  It was a still, quiet night.  I looked up at the stars, light years away.  The stars were so mind-blowingly far away.  What I saw was past life, just remnants of an existence – no, a mirage of an existence.  Is the closest star to Earth, besides the sun, truly 24,000,000,000,000 miles away?  It’s not like I knew such a fact, but I would look it up later, with distraction, when writing in my journal. One light year is 5,865,696,000,000 miles away.  One million light years is incomprehensible to me.  But still, the light I was gazing at, the catchment of light known to me as a star, was created one million years ago.  It took one million years for that light to “get here”, to be visible by me standing beneath night in my back yard in Cottesloe.

One million years.  How old was I?  But decades.  And Daniel?  11 months.  One million years…had such a length of time truly passed on this Earth – and more.  Only, I could not imagine a million years any more than I could a billion, so forget a trillion.  Had dinosaurs stood where I was standing?  Ice, in the Ice Age?  Had a person stood where my feet were now landed –  a person before these flats were built, when there was just land, when Cottesloe hadn’t been populated yet:  an Aborigine.  Had an Aborigine once stood where I was standing, but surrounded by trees, and the unique flora of Western Australia.  

 Or had there been a craggy rock upon which they stood, looking out at the natural land before them, with no imagination of what the future held – and no idea or thought that I, this span of time later, would stand on the smoothed pavement in “my” tiny patch of land in “my” block, “my” flat, thinking of them.

I went back indoors.  It was 11.18 p.m.  ‘You never know if you don’t have a go’ they say.  I would never know whether Chris’ signs had any effect if I did not sleep, if I didn’t allow my consciousness to lapse to unconscious… subconscious?

I got into my nightie and sat on the edge of my bed.  When I was married, I had several nighties, including one true satin one which I had bought in an antique kind of store in Glenferrie, Melbourne, mid teens.  I was fascinated by the old, and when I saw this peach coloured satin nightie, with lace under the bust, which flowed to the floor, lace-hem at my feet, I dearly wanted it.  I worked in a milk bar; I earned, so I could put it on lay-by, and by labour, it would become mine.

I had asked the shop attendant was it real satin and she said yes, real satin.  How precious, I thought, my fingers touching the soft shimmering material.

“Where did you get it?” I asked.

“We often get our goods from auctions, or when a family member has passed away, from their estate.”

It sounded gross to wear some old granny’s nightie she might have died in, but this somehow didn’t feel like that.  It looked almost new, or at least preserved.  It seemed it had been kept, special, perhaps in a box of memories.  It may have been worn by a beautiful actress in the 1930s.  She may have sat at her dressing table, brushing her long, waved hair, sitting in this nightie, her warm, fleshy bosom modestly packed away behind the lace.  I had to have it.

I don’t have that nightie any more.  I have very few outfits, having sold most of them after the marriage for cash, food, for survival.

With Daniel asleep in the next room, me in the dim light of the sleep-out, the lounge light on, I swung my feet into bed, pulled the cover over me.  I somehow felt vulnerable, my feet pointing toward the open door.  I brought them in a little, and lay on my side, facing the back patio, though the curtains were drawn.  I looked down at the end of the bed, at the furniture in the lounge.  All still.  I remembered how it looked with the light off – moonlight streaming in the lounge window, creating shadows and silhouettes of things so normal as a chair, a pile of books, the telephone, the large round papasan.  I imagined, in a nightmare, everything in semi light suddenly rushing forward and clamouring to break through my narrow doorway, to fly at me, land on me, crush me to death.  Imagination my enemy; my creation.

I took my eyes off the foot of the bed, off the lounge.  I didn’t want to turn off the light.  There is so much comfort by light, but still, the light hindered my sleep ability.  I turned away from the patio doors, looked at the wall.  But I felt vulnerable with space at my back, and so turned around again.  I closed my eyes.  It was still, quiet, near midnight.  I opened my eyes.

I would have to do something with Daniel tomorrow.  Since we did the bricks esterday, Saturday, and today was such a write-off – my gosh, I was so tired when I’d seen Ann, washed out.  We would have to get out of the flat and go to the beach or the park or something.  I didn’t want to clean the yoga room, not yet – I was back-broken by the bricks work-out.  I did need the cash though, so I would aim to do that on Tuesday.

I heard a cat in my tiny back garden.  It was making those evil, creepy sounds they do when they fight, or are about to fight.  That long, guttural “nnnnngggggggggeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”, its tone rising up, then down.  Then would come a hiss “hsssssssssaaaaaaa” and a spat.  I didn’t need this, I didn’t need to be lying here, anticipating a cat fight outside my door.  I got up and got a pot of water, unclicked the back window-door quietly, paused and listened, and then quickly slid it open, stepped out shouting “hisssssss” and flung the pot of water into the back garden in general.  There was a scattering amongst the bushes.  One cat leapt up onto the wooden back fence and disappeared over it and the other cat, a grey moggie, ran across the garden, over my neighbour’s partition and scampered away.  Sigh.  I remembered dad, who hated cats, saying “Skitzoo-fritzoo” to shoo them away.  “SKITZOO-FRITZOO!”

I looked at the dark, still night.  It must be 12.00, or soon after.  I didn’t want to be awake at 3, the time things seemed to happen.  But I didn’t want to be not awake at 3, vulnerable, unconscious in my bed, my spirit wandered off on another plane.  No, my spirit had stayed close to me last night.  I remember.  It felt like it was nearby, guarding.  Was that my imagination?  God, I was over-tired.  I closed the back patio door, fixed the curtains, put the pot back in the kitchen and then, walking through the lounge, decided to check on Daniel.  An Angel on a soft white cloud.  How comforting it was to see him, completely at rest.

This is ridiculous, I thought, climbing back into bed.  I’m going to close my eyes now, and I’m going to sleep.  That wasn’t too hard, really, because when in a laying position, when I closed my eyes, the weight of the world descended on my eyelids.  They felt so, so heavy, leaden, laden.  While my eyes were heavy, and my body heavy, it was my mind that was out of the cage.  It was like a lion pacing around my room.  It wouldn’t sleep, just walking up to the wall, turning, back to the other wall, turning.  It was agitated, walking up and down, its mouth slightly open, showing enormous ferocious teeth.  The lion paced up and down, up and down.  My mind.  God, how to still my mind…

Then comes that sort of numbed state where your eyes are leaden balls in your head, dropped back in the eye sockets, sunk in.  And your body, heavy, doesn’t move, and your tingling nerves begin to settle, and the lion begins to tire, and it slows its pace up to the wall.  It pauses one brief second, turns, paces to the other wall.  It turns.  Paces to the other wall.  Turns, its eyes drooping, its large padded paws soft on the carpet, pacing up, slowly, down, slowly.  And somewhere, at some moment in time, it stops.  And just beside my bed the big fatigued pussy cat, having ceased to pace, sits its big weary body down.  Its shaggy mane surrounding its feline frame, drops its head onto its paws and the lion, my mind, closes its eyes, to rest.  Its mouth is shut now, huge whiskers poking out from the side of its large maw.  And somewhere about 1.09, 1.10 a.m., the cage door to my mind creaks slowly shut.  And then bam! Closed.  There is unconsciousness:  sleep.

Copyright, Noeleen

Credits:  Thank you this page – that was a simple, interesting read.  Thank you Wikipedia for the images.

I read a page just now.  It was rich.  It was worded well, it was soulful, it was so very honourable, was entertaining, precious, beautiful.  It wasn’t too long.  It reminded me of the true meaning of “life”/living.  And I wish to recommend it to you:   Patrick’s page about Taihg.

I’m not going to reblog it, I don’t believe in reblogging.  I recommend a visit.

Cheers, to you all.

~ ~ ~

Looking at Cherie’s paintings one day, I felt it may give her some confidence if I bought one. I didn’t want to buy one I didn’t like, just to make her feel good, so I was looking closely at her works, thinking could I freely part with my earnings, in exchange for any one of those pieces of her mind relayed to canvas. Then I saw the painting of the woman lying on a couch – not longways, but her bum up against the back of the couch and her feet in the air, knees bent inward, head leaning over the couch. Her long hair fell down from the seat to the floor. She was sexual, alluring. And I liked the smudge of colours.

“How much is that?” I had asked Cherie. From her reaction, it was clear she had not put a value on it.
“What, do you like it?”
“Yes. I think I’d like to buy it. How much is it?”
“Whatever you think.”
“Whatever I think?”
“Yes,” she said.

I hated that kind of situation. I used to go to a vegetarian restaurant which was completely free to anyone who had the audacity to eat there and not put a donation in the box. The mood was, you put into the box as much money as you thought the meal was worth. Worth by way of time and attention taken to cook it? Worth by way of dollar value of the ingredients? Worth by way of flavour? Worth by way of what it meant to you to not have to cook that day, what relief such gave you? It was too hard for me – I’m just too mental about these things. I didn’t want to figure anyone or anything’s worth. I wanted others to put a value on themselves, and leave it to me whether I would subscribe to it. I am no good at bartering, and I am no good at valuing by conversion to dollars.

“I see,” I’d said to Cherie. She had forced me to contemplate her painting’s “value”. So I imagined that in an art gallery, at a showing, it could collect $100. I imagined at a garage sale she might get $20 for it. I imagined if it was hung in the local coffee shop, certain kinds of people would like to point it out, to happily pay $70 for it. I imagined if she tried selling it off the street she could get $40 for it. I imagined what others might pay for Cherie’s painting, because I had no idea of its value myself.

“How about $80?” I asked.
“$80?” she repeated.
“Yes.”
“Seriously?”

I was employed as a court reporter then, and had no one to look after but my self and my cat – not even so much as a zygocactus worth more responsibility. She was beaming. It’s funny how money does that. I am only human: my eyes shine at money too, though they never break out of my head.

“Sure,” she’d said. And so the deal was made.

“Chris, that cost me $80.”
“It’s facing directly to the door, and drawing in sexual energy,” he said.
“It’s drawing in sexual energy?”
“It attracting it.”
“If I had it on the floor over there, would that be better?”
“It’s better you get rid of it.”
“Chris, it cost me $80!”
“You don’t have to listen to me. I just tell you what it is.”

Daniel was becoming unsettled. I guess he had been held too long. Chris put him down. Daniel looked like he wanted to be picked up again, as anyone “rejected” would be, but then decided he would go off on his own. He went to his toy area in my old room and began rediscovering the lay of the land.

“OK” I said, “I can.”
I went over and took the painting from my bedhead. I didn’t know where to put it, so placed it facing the wall in the kitchen. “So if I take this away, the energies will stop visiting?”
“I write you something. You got paper?”
I always have paper. And pens. I never went anywhere with a single pen; always several. Once, just once, a pen ran out on me and I was frustrated to the extreme. I had to find a newsagent, then buy a pen, just to finish my train of thought. Ever since then I brought two pens or more with me, wherever I went – never just one.

I went to my writing desk and gave Chris a piece of clean, white paper and a texta. He bent over the page and wrote something in Chinese on it. I loved the gentle flow of black ink on the white page, the boxy script with accents tipped at the end of certain lines.
“You got sticky tape?”
I got stick tape. He took my desk chair over to the entrance of the sleep-out, stood on it, and stuck the Chinese sign above the doorway. He then looked up at the ceiling in the sleep-out, walked through the door, walked back out, looked up at the ceiling in my lounge.
“You also need one on this beam,” he said.  He took another page, wrote another sign. Then, wheeling my old office chair across the hard floorboards, he stood on it to place the sign up high, on a beam. Daniel came out at the sound of the chair wheeling around. He looked curiously up at his father, taping a sign to a beam off mum’s ceiling.

“What does it say?” I asked Chris.
“It doesn’t matter what it says.”
“But I’m curious.”
“You always curious.”
I sighed. “I’d just like to know what it says. I want to understand.”
“You can’t understand.”
“I can understand, if you let me.”
“Too much explain.”

Daniel watched us.

“So the energies will come surging through, read the sign and turn away?”
Chris looked at me unamused, as if I had insulted him. I didn’t actually mean to insult him. I genuinely wanted to know why a spirit would come storming through, read a sign and then go off in another direction. If that was what Chris was proposing, I wanted to know it, and know more about it.

“I go now,” he said.
“Wait. Chris, I just want to understand. Why would a spirit read a sign and then go away?”
“You just make fun.”
“I’m not making fun. Sincerely. I want to understand.”
He paused, looked at me. “It’s the geometry here.”

I already knew from our earlier chats that it was not good we lived at the bottom of a steep driveway, as it’s like the energy flows along the streets above us but it rolls down the driveway and falls, dead end like, in a stagnant pool within our home. Stagnant, no life. And the money stops dead here too. It doesn’t collect in our flat, amass, it just doesn’t flow: dead money. I got the flat anyhow, even knowing that, according to Chris’ beliefs – or studies, really. Being only doors away from my old bedsitter (and so much larger), it made moving inexpensive. It was tiring, rolling my bed down Stirling Highway, and carrying the desk along the street, and boxes and boxes of things and so on – that day I had all the guys’ help – but it was economical. 

“What do you mean the geometry?”
“Good feng shui is a clear pathway. You place things so the energy can flow free. If there a blockage, you counteract it.”
“Okay,” I said. This would be the first time I was actually hearing this stuff properly from Chris. Daniel lost interest, and returned to his toys.
“Here, you got many blockages. But there is one clear pathway from your front door, flows through the lounge, flows into your room. So they take that pathway. And you should close your door at night.”
“I can’t close my door, Chris. I want to be in earshot of Daniel. I know he’s only in the next room, but I don’t want doors closed between us. I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel right.”
“You leave your door open, you leave the gateway open.”
“But, but why would a spirit come to a closed door, think ‘oh shit, she’s shut the door’, and choose another pathway? Can’t they just go through the door?”
“You don’t understand,” he repeated.
“But I want to understand. Can’t you explain it to me?”

When we were courting, I asked Chris could I write an article about him for Nova magazine. I am in no way a journalist, and have no interest in researching anything, but I recognized an opportunity to possibly make money plus get my name out there in the written world. Nova was a holistic newspaper that came out once a month. There was often articles on practitioners – herbal medicine, flower essences, reiki and so on, but I had never seen an article on feng shui. I wrote to the editor and asked would they be interested in such an article (because I knew a practitioner) and they said yes, definitely. Their interest was high, the iron was hot. I promised them the product of my interviewing Chris, in three weeks.

Chris had liked the sound of the idea very much. He wanted his picture in it too and I said I was sure that would enhance the article, was sure the editor would be fine with it. So I sat down and thought of all the questions an average person would ask someone in Chris’ field. I was hoping he would be able to answer them better than he had that first day I met him, when I had called on him to do a reading of my bedsitter. I, like Rhona, could not make sense of what Chris said. He’d brought out a compass, walked about, filled in a green sheet which had his business name on it and ‘Happy, Healthy, Wealthy’ – his motto. Then he gave me the green sheet. Looking at the page brought up questions and his answers to my questions were nonsensical, such as,

“It says ‘Knowing your own powerful energy resource direction’ – can you tell me what mine is?”
“It’s written there,” he said, pointing at my birth date and the word ‘solar’ next to it.
“But what is my powerful energy resource direction?”
“There,” and I followed his finger to see he was pointing at ‘STH NTH N/W S/E’. I didn’t know whether it was one of those directions on different days, or perhaps the collection of directions, in different ways. He seemed to be covering all bases.

“Well, under ‘Optimum direction for lottery agents & financial institutions to face’ it says ‘STH NTH N/W S/E’ (the same as under the line about my powerful energy resource direction). Does that mean if I buy a lottery ticket, I should try and find a store with an entrance facing in that direction?”
“Facing that direction.”
“Why would that store be lucky for me and not the next person who was born in, say, December?”
“This your lucky chart.”
“But the place is still facing in the same direction. – whether they walk in the door or I walk in the door.”
“Do you want to go out to dinner with me?”
I hadn’t heard him the first time.
“And banks. Should I do my banking where the entrance of one faces South, North, North-east or South-east?”
“Lucky directions.”
“All of them?”
“Personally for you.”

It was difficult, like asking ‘Is the opposite of the opposite, the opposite?’ and being told ‘The opposite of opposite is the same.’ It may or may not be so, but it didn’t mean I understood.

Unfortunately, when I sat down to interview Chris, I got the same kinds of answers, which seemed to implode on themselves. He got irritated with me and said I didn’t really want to write about him. I insisted I did; I wanted to pass on to readers in simple language what it was he was all about, but I could not write anything if I didn’t understand it myself. The interview had started badly because Chris refused to answer any background questions on himself. He was so cagey, and I even wondered if he was an illegal Australian. He refused to tell me about his growing up, his parents, who inspired him to learn feng shui, who was his teacher? He only said he had studied feng shui in China. His business card read ‘The original, from China’. I would later bear his child, I did not know at the time, and later still, would learn through court papers that he was born on Christmas Island, this ‘Original from China’.

I felt personal embarrassment to have to tell the editor of Nova that – well, not that I was incapable of writing an article, but the person I was going to interview “had a personal emergency and wanted to put things off indefinitely”. The editor seemed genuinely disappointed. It’s not how I wanted my name to imprint. However, my proposal seemed to have inspired her because about half a year later there was an article all about feng shui.

“I haven’t got the time” Chris said, and started moving toward the door. Daniel, sensing Chris was leaving, dropped his toys and made his walk-shuffle way out to us. I wondered when he would take his first steps. What true progression that is for us each: to go from crawling to walking.

“Chris, please. I am genuinely, genuinely petrified at night. I am petrified. Please: will this stop the energies coming back?”

He looked at me, Daniel at his feet now tugging his trousers and saying ‘dadadadada’. Chris’ look seemed to take in my earnestness.

“You should be okay. But if the signs not work, call me tomorrow and I tell you more.”
“Can’t you just tell me more now?”
“I got to go. This should be enough, unless it’s a strong one.
“It IS a strong one, Chris.  I am too frightened to sleep.”
“‘Bye Daniel” he said, stooping down to pick him up.
“I think this work,” he said to me.

Chris then returned Daniel to me, turned around and walked out the wire door and, as if no one was behind him, let it slam in our face. I stepped forward to open it a little, and watch Chris.  He didn’t turn around at hearing the door open. Any normal person would have turned one last second for a quick wave, final eye contact, but Chris just continued walking. Daniel and me watched the back of him walk down the side of the flats, down the three steps, further along the path, then to the left and through the gate which opens onto the laneway. And was gone.

Copyright, Noeleen

Chris had picked up on that part of my personality which is the loner/recluse perfectly, but he had never seen me socially amongst ‘my people’.   I had not exposed Chris to anyone I knew (except Rhona) in the three months I was with him, as I had not yet decided whether I wanted him to be included more fully in my life.  I was so private.  The only person I told about Chris, was Sean my lover of two years.  Chris was the second occasion in two years that I felt I had met someone I might like a relationship with, and so needed to tell Sean that our casual sex was over.  I can never forget Sean’s response:  “Hell, if you’ve found someone who actually likes you, go for it.”  He could not resist the opportunity to remind me he did not actually like me; only had sex with me.  It was like, ‘Why climb that mountain?’ ‘Der, because it’s there.’  It hurt, yes, but what could I expect when I gave myself away for free.

What Chris had not witnessed was the wild, party me; screaming with laughter, gregarious, witty, flirtatious, body language threatening that all hell was ready to break loose.  And those men who managed to manouvre me into a quiet corner of a party scene, would witness what I was at a loss to control:  the immediate falling away of my boundaries, like a dress dropping to the floor, and a wicked, voracious appetite that needed to devour all of the man presented before me, before he could even speak.  It was like I needed to attack before I would be attacked, because I never felt I could stop men with that intent.  I had an appetite, but no fences to contain it in; hence those men who sensed it, got it.  That is, I had no personal power.

So when cornered, I would dissolve in lust, closing my eyes and feeling my way feverishly, feeding my physical body and impounding my mind.  Unthinkingly, I seduced with my eyes, feasted with my mouth, and took control by delusion.  Post-encounter, I would giggle like a shy Catholic schoolgirl, even I not knowing how I changed rapidly so.  Of course, little of this was possible – being beautiful, witty, sociable, or having enough confidence about my body to have sex – without alcohol.

So for Chris to see me with another human being, was odd indeed.

“Chris, this is Ann,” I said.  “Ann; Chris.”

Chris nodded to Ann.   His demeanour changed.  Whereas he strode in strong and bold, he softened his stature and decided not to bark, but talk.

“Hello Ann.”

“Hi,” she smiled.  “You’re Daniel’s father, are you?”

“Yeah, I the father.  Here,” he said, turning to me, “I brought you things.”  He handed me a plastic bag.  I peered into it curiously and saw five packets of Asian type biscuits, a cylinder of twirled wafer sticks, and some bruised fruit.

“Thank you, Chris” I said, “That’s very thoughtful.”

I went to the kitchen and unloaded the goods as Chris responded to Daniel’s bubbling gurgles and verbals.  He picked him up and checked his nappy to see if it was wet.  I noticed the biscuits were eight months out of date and then, curious, checked the twirled wafers.  They were a year out of date.   I felt constant confusion with Chris, whether I should appreciate what he brings those occasions he arrives with “something for you”, or whether I should say, “Chris, the biscuits are stale and I don’t normally eat stale biscuits.  I appreciate the thought, but please don’t bring me stale biscuits and bruised fruit any more.”  The words crossed my mind when I turned from the kitchen bench and faced him, standing by Ann in the lounge.  But I couldn’t bring myself to say it.   Why embarrass him in front of Ann?  And maybe this was genuinely all he could give this week.  Who was I to make judgment that it lacked value – for value is in the giving, not the gift.

How Christian of me.

But still within, I felt conflict about his offerings.

“You’re Noeleen’s friend, are you?” he asked Ann, as he held Daniel’s tiny hand and moved it about.

“Yes, well – yes.  We met through Dave.”

“Who’s Dave?”

Ann looked at me.  “He’s just someone from the theatre group,” I said.  “Remember I told you I used to be on stage?”

“Oh yeah, okay.  When’s your birthday, Ann?”

Oh no, I thought, Just like he did with Rhona. 

“Pardon?”

“Your birthday.  I do feng shui.  I tell you about you.”

“Oh, okay.  Um, 5^th of November,” Ann said.

“What year?”

“1972.”

“Do you know what time you born?”

“Chris, I don’t think –“

“No, I don’t,” Ann said, with a slight laugh.  It really is unusual to ask people about the details of their birth time and date within minutes of meeting them, but Chris seemed to have no hesitation about doing it.  Did he really want to tell Ann about herself – Rhona about herself – or was he trying to gauge the placement of these people in my life?

“No, not many people know their time,” he said, “But that’s okay.  I can still do.”

When Chris and me were together, pre-Daniel, he asked if I could find out what time I was born.  As I was born at King Edward Memorial Hospital only a few suburbs away, it felt easy to write a letter to them and make the enquiry.  I didn’t know how long they held records for, it was a shot in the dark, but I became suddenly curious, myself.  I discovered I was born at 10.20 a.m.  I still have the letter from the hospital.  With this information, Chris was able to sum me up fairly fully, to his mind, and he determined we could be together.  Apparently if you’re born in the morning, you’re a ‘morning person’; and opposite for night.  It was true I was a morning person, so I couldn’t knock his beliefs too hard.

When Chris first met Rhona from the old block of flats and he asked her birth date, she asked why?  I had asked that too.  I think that even in the person querying Chris’ question, he read something of the person.  Ann just gave it away, but Rhona and me questioned why, what did our information mean to him?  Chris told Rhona he could tell her things about herself.  We’re always interested to hear about ourselves, and when someone claims an inside knowledge via some method they know, it’s a little too irresistible for the ego, and you tell.

When Chris learned that Rhona read tarot cards, he offered to do a free feng shui reading of her unit, in exchange for a tarot reading.  Rhona asked did I mind, as it sounded interesting, and I said of course I didn’t mind.  Chris was returned to me about two hours later, and the next time I saw Rhona I asked did she get much out of the reading.  She told me she couldn’t understand what Chris said about her Lucky House and which direction she should point her bed when sleeping, but it had been kind of interesting.  She told me, too, that Chris asked her out to dinner.  I was really surprised, given that we were courting, but Rhona shrugged it off as nothing much – she got asked out a lot.  I didn’t know about Tracey at that stage, and that I was the unknowing affair outside their relationship, but I do remember wondering about Chris when Rhona told me that.  How could he ask her to dinner, I thought, when we were just starting a relationship together.

“You a white rat,” Chris said.

“Oh, okay,” Ann said.

“You born in the year of the black rat.”

“Oh.  What does that mean?”

“The rat has good health.  You full of energy, charming.”

“I like the sound of that,” Ann smiled.  I smiled too.

“You very influential too.  Noeleen got a good friend.”

I suppose it isn’t too bad, I thought, As long as he doesn’t ask her out to dinner – for Tracey’s sake.

Daniel started bubbling away again, drawing Ann to comment how gorgeous he is, and to touch his cheeks.  The softness of Daniel’s cheeks is like the softness you imagine a cloud to be, if you don’t think of the reality that it’s almost thin air.  If you fantasise reaching up and touching a cloud, it’s like reaching out and touching Daniel’s cheeks.

“So are you getting some work at the Fremantle markets, Chris?” I asked.

“No, no work.”

“Oh, I thought you said on the phone you were getting work there.”

“No, I got no work,” he said again.  How odd he was.

It then occurred to me Chris may be afraid to tell me he has more work than just his feng shui, in case I more vigorously pursued child support.  But it was already under way, with our DNA test only a month away – in January (the month of Daniel’s birthday; how ironic).  I still resented he was causing me a couple of hundred dollars expense to prove he is Daniel’s father, when he knows he is Daniel’s father.  I wish the courts made it that the questioning parent had to pay, if they had no substantial reason to query it.  Chris had no substantial reason at all to question my fidelity to him, and was simply dragging on the proceedings in avoidance of being a financial parent of Daniel. Chris may reckon he has me all figured out by the time and day of my birth, but I was beginning to figure him out by the minute.  Reluctantly.

I decided to change the subject.

“Ann and me, we were just talking…” I said.

“Oh yeah,” Chris responded.

I looked at Ann.  She knew it was on the tip of my tongue.  Would Chris think I had mental problems if I told him what I’d experienced?  Would he try and gain custody of Daniel, as he’d threatened he would do when Daniel was out of nappies.  “I take Daniel then.  We got a house and fence.  You got nothing.  We win custody, and YOU come visit.”

“Do you want me to go?” Ann asked.

“Oh, not really,” I said.  “Or maybe.”

“I’ll go,” she said, “Give you and Chris a moment with Daniel.”

Chris didn’t know what was going on, so busied himself with Daniel.  But it was clear he was keeping an ear to the ground.

“You may as well,” Ann whispered at my front door.  “If he knows about energies and things, why not?”

“Yeah, I suppose,” I said.  “I have nothing to lose.  He doesn’t like me already, because I had his child.”

Ann left.  I stood at the front door, watching her go.

Behind me was the small hallway, which led to the lounge.  I decided I would do it – ask Chris what he and his beliefs might have to say about me and my experiences.  I turned around, went up the short hallway, and found no-one in the lounge.   I walked through to my old bedroom, and found Chris staring at the enormous mirror I have.  It was one of the things I wanted from the marriage – over six foot tall, and just shy of being square by such dimension.   In my old bedsitter, I had kept it in the entrance – to have a quick look at, before going off to work.

“You shouldn’t sleep with a mirror in the room, especially when you can see it from your bed,” Chris said.

“I don’t sleep in here” I said, which would have been obvious because I had moved my bed to the sleep-out.

“But it’s pointing at Daniel’s cot.”

“Daniel can’t see it,” I said.  “I’ve never seen him look at it.  He lies on his back, mostly.  What’s the problem?”

He was holding Daniel, and Daniel was taking in his energy, his presence in our home.  Daniel would have to know this man was not like the others – not like Tom, not like Dave.  And when I was in touch with Trevor, though Daniel was but newborn; even not like Trevor.

“When you are sleeping, then your spirit can wander.”

“Yes, I believe that too.  It’s okay for the spirit to wander, don’t you think?”

“It’s the portal to the next world.”

“Chris, it’s glass.”

“You don’t understand.”

“When I was a kid, I deliberately broke a mirror because I was curious.  It’s glass which has an orange backing – or the mirror I had, did.  That’s all it is.”

“No, it’s the portal to the next world.  And they look in, and can see your body with no spirit and it can be bad.”

Chris was talking straight as a doctor and it was a bit freaky he should say it so bluntly.

“What can they do?” I asked.

“They can come into your body.  They can take your body.”

“Chris, you can’t be serious.”

“I don’t care you not believe me, don’t point the mirror at Daniel’s cot.”

“What’s the best room for a mirror then?  I always thought the bedroom was best to hold a mirror.”

“The best room in the house is the room that has most happy activity.  The lounge for most people.  It reflect your happiness, togetherness, your family together.  It reflect and multiply.”

I didn’t know what to say.  It sort of made sense.

“The light in the room, reflect in the mirror, double, triple happiness.”

“Oh,” I said. 

I wanted to move the mirror.  I didn’t want it pointing at Daniel’s cot any more.  I picked it up, and I have to open my arms fully wide to do that, and moved it into the lounge.

“Even though I’ve got no couch, no TV, no chairs, no family?” I asked Chris when I set it down.  ”It will still have good effect?”

“No matter.  Don’t sleep with the mirror pointing at you.”

Daniel was clearly loving Chris’ attention.  Chris was actually responding to Daniel, his moves, his noises.  It was so precious to see.  I wondered if it was because Chris was in a good mood, or because he was not with Tracey and Phong, or if he was just feeling great he had picked up some work at the Fremantle markets (I suspected) – whatever it was, it was beautiful to see, and one salty drop of a tear wrenched from my heart and dribbled its way down my insides, until it was soaked up by the rest of ‘me’.  I wished Chris could be Daniel’s father properly, always.

“Chris, can I ask you something?”

“What?” he asked.

“Just, at night – I moved all the furniture, as you can see, since you were last here.”

“Yeah, what?”

“I sleep in the sleep-out now.”

He said nothing.  He was just looking at me.  He had this impatience about him, which was aside from his arrogance, and you felt impelled to come to some point, or be of some kind of interest to him, or he would look away, then walk away, and you would see nothing but the back of him, until he wanted something from you.

“I’m not sleeping well.”

“What you mean?”

I felt like crying again.  Just recalling it, weakened me.

“When, after I got Daniel back, after you’d had him a few nights, I started sleeping in the sleep-out.  And the first night –”   I looked at him:  was he listening?  Was he interested?  Would he scoff at me?  Had he heard anything like this before?

“The first night, I, about 3 in the morning, something – there was, like, an energy.”

He continued to watch me.  His slanted eyes were beautiful, there was no doubt.  He had this deep beauty in his gaze, but he contained it, like no-one may know the beauty of Chris.

“What energy?” Chris asked.  “What are you talking about?”

I had done it now.  I may as well say at all.  I became quite sober.  The atmosphere changed somehow, as I spoke solemnly of “it”.

“I woke up and I couldn’t move.  I was paralysed, but conscious, and I wanted to call out to Daniel, but couldn’t.”  He continued to look at me.  “And the next night, I woke up and there was an energy in my room.  It was unseen but real, very real, Chris, and it petrified me.”

Chris moved from the lounge, into my room.  He looked around.

“I haven’t been sleeping very well.  I’m –” I wanted to say I was afraid to sleep, but he might decide me mentally incompetent to care for his child.  “I’m just so tired, I feel broken.  I’ve never known anything like this before in my life.  I am really, really scared, Chris.  I can’t sleep.”

So I said it.

“You shouldn’t have this picture here,” Chris said.  He was talking about the painting Cherie had done.  I had it at my bedhead.

Cherie was someone I met, I can’t even remember how.  She did art, in her own time and at her own expense.  She was living on government money, hence fairly poor, because she had suffered such an extreme case of meningitis she almost died, and had residual problems of some kind.  She was okay, for a human being, but not what I could ever call a friend.  The reason I could not call Cherie a friend is because she was so entrenched in the tragedy of her life, it was like she lived in a pit of quicksand, ever sinking, ever reaching out to passers-by, asking that they help her.  I had problems too, but I always, always tried to change things when I knew things were ‘wrong’.  I had dark days where I locked me and my problems up in a cell in my mind, hid behind my drawn curtains – one, two, even three sleeps in a row.  But when I decided to move because, after all, I didn’t have the guts to suicide, I inevitably decided to give it another go, to try and get beyond, to change things, move the unmovable, ignore the ignorant, dismiss, drop, let go of, forge another path.  But Cherie always sought help – she had in mind that she was helpless – and this I could not relate to.

TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW, 4 FEBRUARY 2012.

Copyright, Noeleen

I wondered if Daniel recognized Chris’ voice when he heard it on the answering machine.  I wondered too what emotion, if any, Daniel felt on hearing it – the voice of the man he would learn to call Dad; or the man who is dad really, though he denied Daniel be blood, in court.  I wondered also whether Daniel had learned anticipation on hearing Chris’ voice – that having spoken on the machine, Chris may drop in some time later this day, or alternatively; not be seen for a month.

I stared at the photographs on my wall as Chris spoke, and Daniel at my feet amongst the shopping, stared at me.

My bosom literally weeps for Daniel if we are too long apart, and me; I ache.  A part of me resides with Daniel.  So his father:  does a part of Chris reside with Daniel, too?  And when Chris chooses to not see Daniel for a month, does he feel it at all?  He seemed so emotionless when we were together – a guarded manuscript written only because the years etch lives unfold; not at all with will, with want to be told.

If I could not evoke emotion in the man, had the birth of his son perhaps paved a way?  Was Daniel crawling through the rubble of Chris’ heart through time, establishing new ground?  That flame within Chris’ soul which united with the flame in mine, I wondered, did it lean toward our boy, even just a whisper?  Chris’ non-commitment to Daniel’s raising, lack of support of the expense and needs of Daniel, spoke opposite the character of love, but what was within this man I still did not know.  Deadpan he was in issues of the heart, but could that be love; that chink in his armour I detected?  And his daughter, whom Chris also did not support: what did his heart hold for her?

I decided to pause before ringing Chris back, just unpack the shopping first.  Daniel watched as I unloaded items from the various bags and hid them in the cupboards.  He chatted and raised his arms when he saw something that looked yummy.  Would he really grow from there on the floor to my size and beyond?  I spooned some yoghurt into a bowl, added some tiny chopped up pieces of banana, put Daniel into the high chair and let him enjoy it.  I sat down, and thought.

Chris and me never declared love on each other in the three months I knew him.  Nor did love soften his gaze when he looked upon me.  This was fine:  I was used to not being loved when embraced, expected nothing more from men than to have my availability engaged for a while.  But Chris’ actions spoke gentleness at times – massages, bringing me concoctions from the Chinese doctor when I wasn’t well.  It was confusing his bulldog exterior belied this occasional, inexplicable tenderness.  And if you pointed to the tenderness, he became instantly gruff, denying it, and would bark that I think too much, feel too much, talk too much (notice too much).

Daniel was loving his yoghurt.  His fingers fished through the creamy milky substance to discover the banana pieces.  A couple of times I tried encouraging him to hold the spoon and use it properly, but I was scattered inside, tired.  It was too much effort to be mother today; I would teach him tomorrow, as I had yesterday.  And too, I was distracted.  I did not acknowledge it but I knew it:  I was afraid of, gaining in anxiety at impending nightfall.

All those months ago – a year now – I was on the verge of interpreting Chris’ random tenderness as care for me.  I was preparing in mind to flatter myself so, when I discovered he had a long standing relationship already.  And what did Tracey later say? – yes, she accepted Chris’ infidelities because he had “been hurt by love”.  At any stage of life, on any occasion, we can decide “that” is why/”that” is my licence to live a certain way.  I am human:  I have done it too.

Chris had at some stage in his life decided he would have loyalty to no-one but his own desires, and Tracey, who knows when she chose this:  chose to accept being not special enough to warrant loyalty, undivided time, undivided love, honoured by union twined by devotion.  Me, I turned away, an unseen child within my womb yet I not knowing, and laughed unsmiling at myself for nearly being fooled into thinking a man had really liked me.   Always the interpreter, defines the meaning.

“Hello, Chris here.”

“Chris, hi.  It’s Noeleen.”

“Oh, yeah, I at the Fremantle markets.  I maybe getting work here.  I leave at 5.00.  Can I come and see Daniel?”

“Sure,” I said, “That’s fine.”  How could I say no, really – ever.  Who knows when he’d call, when he’d find himself passing, when he’d decide he was available for his son?  If I let him see Daniel when he wanted, Chris just might grow a relationship with him and by that relationship, actually want the best for Daniel and be willing to contribute from his personal life, to make it happen.  I had easily turned over all I possessed to my son when he was born:  all I would earn, could earn; my life, energy, time.  But with men – or sigh, no, with Chris, it seemed to be something that had to be induced.  If he saw how wonderful Daniel is, cherishable, what promise he held, perhaps he would naturally choose to no longer measure Daniel’s needs against his bank balance, choosing to shelter his money before Daniel.

“Oh darling!” I said, after hanging up the phone to Chris.  Daniel had made a royal mess of the high chair tray, his fingers and face were sticky and his expression was all giggles.  I stroked his head and put my face near his and said “messy!”  I then kissed one cheek, said “messy!” – at which he giggled – and kissed the other cheek.  I lifted him out and set about cleaning up.  My body did the actions of wiping over the tray, rinsing the bowl, laying Daniel down for a change of nappy, wiping his face, and all the while I thought of Chris.  Once when we were together, before Daniel was conceived, he was barking at me that I was foolish in my life because I didn’t have a strong sense of direction.

“I ask you this,” he had said to me, us standing on his ninth floor balcony, post-coital, overlooking the Swan River, “Who do you live for?”

Who do I live for? I contemplated, Who do I live for….?  I stood looking at the dazzling sun shimmering off the deep blue waters of the river.

“Who do you live for?” he repeated.

“Just a second” I said.  I really wanted to consider this.  Who, indeed, did I live for?  I slowly, sadly realized:  I lived for no-one.  I felt heavy human failing in that I was not giving my life to any good purpose.  Certainly I was not a natural Mother Theresa but the least I could do was be volunteering at the local animal shelter.

“Who do you LIVE for?” Chris barked at me, impatiently.  “Who do you live for, who do you die for?”

Die for, I thought to myself – that was another proposition entirely.  Who would I give my life for?  Who would I save, defend, stand in the face of danger to protect?  No-one, I realized again.  This was terrible, my life was even more futile than I had already thought.

“You stupid!” Chris had then said, losing patience, and stormed off inside.

“What, why?  That doesn’t mean I can’t find purpose!” I appealed, following him into his tiny bedroom.  Chris swung around and beat his chest as he declared, “I live for ME!  I die for ME!  You need to live for you!  Die for you!  You are stupid, you don’t even know who you live for, who you die for!” and he went off into his tiny lounge space and busied himself with I don’t know what because I was struck dumb.  It had seemed mildly a trick question at first and I really wanted to search my heart for the honest answer, when ultimately I should have said without hesitation that I was living for me, and I would die for me.   I, what I stood for, lived, would be worth defending to the death.   And once again we had one of those afternoons after sex where he would be grumpy and at a loss with me, and I would be at a loss with me too.

“Hello?”  It was Ann.

“Come in!” I called, finishing Daniel up on the change table.  As usual, I had the wire door unlocked, and Ann made her way to the bathroom.  She immediately cooed over Daniel, which he lapped up.  How many more faces would present today?  How many more smiling people would he see?  His life seemed to be visiting face upon visiting face, in between periods of time with mum alone – sometimes she was so cheerful and sometimes so distant.  Daniel had an affected mum.

It was good to have the distraction of others for Daniel, when I was not all there.  I just wasn’t all together, today.  I let Ann hold Daniel and took the opportunity to walk us down the side of the block of flats to the clothes lines where I unpegged our washing, dropped it into the basket and carried the load back indoors.  Ann played with Daniel and spoke to him while I did this, and all the while I wondered how I would say “it”.

When finally we were settled of activity and Daniel was on the floor between us, an array of toys surrounding him, I told Ann outright the bizarreness of the past week.  I told her how Robert had brought manifested dust into our home, in case it was important in the unfolding of things, and put it near my Jesus Christ statue that I’d had since age 8, when I lived with my aunty (after the orphanage) after Mum’s suicide.  Ann wanted to see the dust and I let her, and she marveled at the story that this ash-like substance had been created by the rubbing together of two fingers.  Robert claimed to have seen it himself, to have received it himself, directly made.

“Do you believe it?” I asked Ann.

“I don’t know.  It’s hard to believe.”

“I agree.  I don’t know either.  I don’t know what to make of it.  I’m scared to eat bits of it like he suggested, in case it’s not what he says it is.  It’s like taking cocaine off someone and just believing it’s cocaine, but you don’t really know the origin.”

“I guess so,” she said.

“But anyway, I just leave it there.  Robert said it was supposed to be good.”

“Do you trust Robert?”

“I hardly know Robert.”  I didn’t tell her about the ambush, running semi-naked from his friend’s house, throwing my clothes on, on his front porch, betrayal throbbing in my temples, burning – or how I had genuinely liked Robert, what I had sensed.  But again the interpreter, defines the meaning.  I just said he was a senior trainer at the dojo.

We moved from the subject of the dust to the night I felt almost completely drained of qi, how the experience had left me empty as a shell the next day, how I’d felt fragile, weak.  She was awed.

“Do you believe me?” I asked her.

“I do,” she said.  “It’s not the first time I’ve heard of this sort of thing.”  I was relieved at this.  It still seemed impossible to me, even as I spoke it.  It seemed wildly imaginative and completely delusional.  And had I not experienced it myself, I would have had great difficulty believing it the way Ann seemed willing to.

I then told Ann how I had dragged myself through that day, completely out of sorts, but physically capable of loading bricks and working, and having a meal with my yoga teacher and his ex partner and child – my spirit meanwhile crouched into a corner, head down, recovering.  Next, I told Ann of waking up and feeling the energy in the room, how palpable it was, and how terrifying it was to have a human instinct knowing but being completely unable to see anything.  It felt so good to out with it all.  I told her of all three experiences, of Daniel crying and being unsettled since I moved him into the sleep-out for his independence, but how I then took on the sleep-out and let Daniel have my huge room where he was sleeping fine.

“Why don’t you just go back to your own room?” Ann asked me.

“Because I rented this place for a purpose – for Daniel to have a room, as well as me.  I don’t want one room in the place unoccupied, steered clear from.  I want, I don’t know, I want it gone.  I’m petrified, Ann.”  And for some reason, I started crying.  Daniel looked up at me from the floor.  I wiped my tears.  But it was fatigue streaming from my eyes, and being at wits’ end, being too scared to sleep, and I couldn’t control it:  I cried more.

Ann left her chair to comfort me, and Daniel stopped playing.

“Mum’s fine, darling,” I smiled.  “Just tired.  Mum’s just a bit tired.”  His gorgeous brown eyes looked deeply at me.  Intelligence shone in them.  He was astonishing.

“I just wish you could stay or Dave would, or anybody.  I don’t want to be alone at night any more,” I gulped and gasped.  “It’s like if I sleep, this intruder WILL come in.  I’m really, really petrified, Ann,” I sobbed.

Ann’s hug was warm, it was nice.  She said maybe I could try a different Priest, and that made me laugh.  That was enormously funny, really.

Ann sat back down and Daniel slowly started playing again, looking up every now and then to check on mum.

“I don’t know.  I don’t know, Noeleen, I really don’t.”

“No,” I said, “I don’t either.”  I took a huge sigh.  Physically, I felt a little alleviated.

“So you really had seen a ghost, so to speak,” she said, after a minute.

“Yep,” I responded.  And we said nothing for a while.

It was when we were sitting like this, that Chris walked through the front door.

Copyright, Noeleen