Story for one

I am sitting in a "van gogh" style cafe in the midst of summer. I
love listening to the sound ignorance makes when it is a tourist .
"It's midnight," I thought, as stars streamed through my glass of
chardonnay. I looked at my watch. Who cares if one owns a rolex or a
movada? Brands really become just another element of the human comedy.
I stared at my own rolex and thought, "My father was buried with his
rolex, buried in his 10,000 dollar suit. The rosary was a bit
hypocritical, considering he was an atheist. But we all were there, my
sister, me (I flew in from Copenhagen). my mother and my father's
sisters. They greedily were awaiting the reading of the will. I
shrugged. I never was much interested in the money. My father's name
was Jonathan, a good violinist's name. My father always liked his
name.
He always signed it with an embellished flourish.
Karl, whom I met in Iceland, was always seething in pretension. But I
loved him, more than one could ever really love another human
being.
One thing is good, I thought, one place always stays the same. The
lights in "Old Town" in Salzburg softly reflected upon the Salzac.
Salzburg is the one city where one can find 'ground' or sanity. I
stared at the Austrians sitting at the table near me. They were older
,retired, and they talked about their children, their grandchildren,
and the 'politics' of family. If any politician needs to learn and
succed in politics, all he has to do is to listen to the politics of a
family. So much effort goes into it, I thought. We who belong to
families are always playing a game of chess, always jockeying for
position and attention. One is always running a race in one's family,
and the more money that is involved, the more competitive the
race.
I stared at the people across my table. Their faces were creased. They
were dressed in tweeds, and sometimes the smell of pipe smoke would
softly drift over to my table. I closed my eyes. Pipe smoke is like a
dream. It is the smell of burgundy wine and long conversations in the
night about poetry and life.
Pipe smoke is autumn and long winter evenings when fireplaces burn
through the night'; not for warmth but for soul.
My thoughts came back to me like a reflex heartbeat when the body dies
for one eternal minute, then once again inhales the breath of life. One
heartbeat and still counting until the soul becomes stable again.
I loved Salzburg because it never changed. The city still played to the
sounds of laughter and echoes and soft conversations in the
night.
I stared at the night sky. I thought of Iceland again. It repeats
itself over and over like a dream waiting to be resolved. I remember.
He told me no-one would ever believe me. No one would ever believe what
he had done. He was after all a respected member of the Icelandic
medical community and a guest professor at the university in reykjavik.
He laughed and said, "Who would believe what we did to you'? I remember
how he made me feel. He made me feel like a ghost, like an echo in my
own skin. He made me want to burrow underground like a hedgehog who
encountered a most frightening enemy.
But no matter how burdensome his telepathy,
I could escape it in Salzburg. My meal arrived. And since I had not
eaten all day, I relished every flavor the fish had to offer. I thought
then of Bourges in France. Bourges was a beautiful place. It wrapped
itself within the blanket of history and ornate architecture.
Bourges was safe. it was as safe as home was; home where geese flew
when the leaves change to orange and yellow in the autumn. Home was old
stone fences where vines played with wildflowers. Home was apple
orchards and long walks along paths where the sheep would softly call
to one another. Home was music. And that is what home is. It is music
and soft laughter. It is about watching sunsets and discussing clouds.
Sometimes my father would stare at the orange of a sky. He would shrug
and say, "Why do physicist's dreams always come true"? Then he would
pick a dandelion and blow its stars to the wind. And he would say,
"Life, you see, it is the beauty of life itself, it is the nature of
the thing that we all really crave."
Now, sitting in the cafe, I thought, "karl just stole everything there
was inside of me". He stole my past, my art, my dream, my world. And he
created one filled with terror and contradiction." My friend told
me,
"You are a grown woman. You are 23. You lived a childhood most of us
would have killed for." "How could you have allowed one Icelandic
buffon to have destroyed you?" "Ah, I said, you see he destroyed many
before me." I had nightmares about his breathing and his black coat for
many years after the fact." "Was it emotional rape?" Perhaps it was,
perhaps it was.
Everytime I conciously choose to forget, he returns in my dreams to
haunt me...karl, like a piece of jazz that plays on in the wind.
And in the end it is the art, it is the music that heals one's soul. It
takes you by the hand and leads you to resolutions through colour and
sound. "Klee, at times like this, is good food for the soul", i
thought.
Laughter is good.
I sipped my wine, listened to the strains of conversation, amd mozart
on the wind. I thought," life sometimes is worth holding on to. Life is
passion. And we must all believe in the passion it creates. We all must
hold on, no matter what the cost. Somehow, life continues, no matter
how many stars are counted.
And when one gives stars for another's soul , one must remember,
destruction of the heart has no rating. Nightmares in life really do
happen, and the spirit cares not how another rates it. My father always
said, "It is the music of the writing; writing is like a piece of
improvisational jazz that keeps unfolding itself, always in the process
of creation. And the artist cares not who listens to it. The reason he
said is simple. "The artist, the writer, the musician, if they are true
to themselves, create because they hear the sounds of life that no one
else hears nor understands. The artist creates no matter who listens or
reads what he does. The artist never really writes nor paints or
composes for other people. The writer writes because the experience of
living needs words, not ratings.
He stared into his coffee and said, "What Karl did to you in Reykjavik
was nothing less than the rape of the heart." "Karl, he said, had
forgotton, had forgotton what it was to be human." I think, my father
said, the man goes to church, but sits within an empty house." "And
that, he said, is the worst of the human race. "Karl, he said, forgot
what it was to be human." "Greed does that to people". My father then
looked into the sky and sighed. "You see, he said to me, we buy all
these grand things; grand homes, grand furniture, grand books and great
works of art. But in the end one leaves them all behind only for his
heirs to sell . They usually spend the profits from whatever the price
of history is going for these days on foolish things."He laughed
heartily then and said. "There are so many estates that are overgrown,
left bare, many still with their libraries intact, and the furniture
and sculpture still breathing inside of them. Many of them abandoned
long ago." Yet no-one has vandalized them. Now that is being human," he
said. "Where are these estates that the heirs would just leave so
carelessly behind?" I asked. "Many, he said, are in New York state,
upstate in the mountains and along the river. The trees protect them
and their once elegant driveways are reduced to mere paths. Their
fountains still adorn their now overgrown elegant gardens."
He smiled and said, "One such estate still had an original rodin
sculpture in its garden and an original rembrandt painting still hung
over its fireplace. No one goes near those grand houses, not even
thieves. The heirs just locked them up, walked away, and forgot they
existed." How can one walk away from one's history and leave so much
behind?" I asked. He said,"you see, they left behind rembrandts and
rodins and tapestries worth millions on the market because it is not
the 'things' that counted to them. It was the memories they couldn't
stand. So the forests grew over the grand homes and the tiffany stained
glass windows, and everyone forgot they were there. Only the ghosts, he
said walk through the once grand halls. And the heirs, well they
re-created themselves and forgot their past." "And the houses with
their very valuable interiors just go on breathing, staying in the past
and letting the memories play out their music."
The vines grow around them, and the trees and wildflowers protect them
from the elements."
"Some of them, he said, still have the linens neatly ironed, neatly
placed upon grand walnut carved dining room tables, and china worthy of
a museum sits at each chair waiting for people who never arrive." "You
see, he said, the mere fact that they have not been vandalized for so
may years, nothing stolen, speaks proudly of the human spirit, don't
you think?" I agreed. My father took a long draught from his pipe and
stared at the apple tree smiling in the wind. "Karl, he said, is a lie
to himself." "He forgot why seagulls cry in the night". I shook my head
and said, "Yes, true, but through the destruction, physicists still
dream."
He laughed and replied, "And artists still create. Karl couldn't take
that away from you, no matter how hard he tried." I tapped my heart
twice and said, "two heartbeats and still counting until the soul is
stable again."