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Peter Francyk, my teacher: "Yes, you should go to Berlin! For sure!" When he spoke that, my heart swelled as wide as the store we were in (Wild Oats), into this city (Salt Lake), and then out beyond into the countryside and wild lands (The Great Salt Lake). My heart's one thought thudded through me: OF COURSE I'M GOING TO EUROPE. (Just like in "A Room with a View": "But of course I love him! What did you all think?") And my heart leapt out of that store, while my body walked leaded, in a daze. I was sobbing. I was given the gift of seeing Peter and Sunny again. My instinct (which I almost ignored) to stop at Wild Oats (for no reason at all) was, as usual, RIGHT ON: I walked in, and there was Sunny Dawn Rose, like an apparition. I started to weep when Peter was suddenly there before me, too, like he had risen up like smoke from the floor. My joy and relief and tenderness at seeing him surprised even me. He held me tightly while I shook and cried. What a gift, during their incognito one-day stop back in SLC, before moving on to LA, Thailand, New Mexico, and who knows? I left there and felt Peter's impression on me. Like his embrace had transferred something--a piece of him, perhaps, a piece of the whole. I felt different. The boundaries in my life felt more translucent, almost ephemereal. There they were, shimmering around me and my life, and yet obviously an illusion in many ways. And willing to shift and move and even obliterate themselves completely if I just said the word. If I, Celeste, were to truly not believe in them anymore. If I gave up the past's complete authority over me. I felt a power and a largeness in myself, specifically in my chest, that seemed to overwhelm and override any illness or other restrictions in my life I had to come to accept as MINE and semi-permanent. AND YET I spent the afternoon and evening in bed anyway. I was too exhausted to do anything else. A sinus infection of two months returned, or never left. I felt my head pound. I felt the fever rising. So with that "contradiction" of sorts, which I didn't even have the energy to grapple with let alone penetrate and understand and overcome, I sunk into a kind of HOLE last night. A dark, deep place in myself. Quiet. Deeper than any confusion. Just empty nothingness. And an unspoken, unlived uncertainty began to surface and swim, slow and dark and worm-like, in the black lifeless waters I had retreated to. And so I begged to be left alone. Scott gave me that much. Though his face was puzzlement. Work with fear? sure. Work with despair? sure. Work with frustration? sure. But work with nothingness? emptiness? silence? I had absolutely nothing to say. I didn't want those words that used to be mine.
This illness, my life, confounds me. Celeste Holes in Berlin, ck [2007-07-12]
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Last five letters Gathering [2009-09-04] ?2002, Scott & Celeste. |