The Visitor

to a certain somebody

He came by yesterday. Now that she didn’t have to care for her mother anymore, part of her brain was unoccupied. The part that picked up the soft unobtrusive sounds that every house has. That side of her heard his knock on the door and –as in a reflex- let him in.
With a friendly smile he entered her room and made himself comfortable. She vaguely thought she recognized his face and he exuded an air of familiarity with her, so she made him coffee.
“Do you take cream and sugar?” she asked him.
“I’ll have both,” he replied. He spilled powdered cream on the floor. He stirred his coffee so erratically that the drops landed on the table, where they mixed with the sugar crystals that had fallen next to his mug.
While her PC was starting up, she turned to get her coffee from the dinner table. She wasn’t sure… did he retract his hand from her mug? Had he put sugar in her coffee? His smile was open and warm. Instead of asking him, she probed her coffee with a spoon. No milk no sugar, the coffee was just fine. She took it with her to the desk with the computer. “You’ll have to excuse me, “ she said, “there is something I must write down, before I forget. ” He nodded understandingly.
She wrote her lines, tasted them by reading them over again. It felt fine. The right amount of sweetness and bitterness combined. She sipped her coffee. Strange, it tasted a bit drab. Annoyed she looked at her story again. What had she been thinking of, when she wrote it? It wasn’t all that good. She closed the program without saving the new lines.
Her uninvited guest had opened a small suitcase. From it he withdrew a little standard and some sticks of  incense. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“No, no” she didn’t dare forbid him. Besides, in the past she used incense herself now and then. She opened her mail application. To see if a certain someone had dropped a line to her. A little life line.
“When did you get his last mail?” The voice of the visitor was so close, it seemed to come from within. So she wasn’t surprised at his knowing what she was looking for. “That was yesterday afternoon.” She answered casually.
“Oh, that’s over 24 hours already,” the visitor pulled up his eyebrows questioningly. Then , with an innocent  face, he lit the incense. “That’s not his habit, is it?”
She got a little irritated, but had to admit her guest was right. It wasn’t his habit.
“Well, of course at some point email is a little limited. Boring maybe. Some people get at that point sooner than others.”
She felt her mood sinking several degrees at that last remark. Because it reflected her feelings exactly.
"Come. Smell the incense. It'll cheer you up." The visitor invited her over to her own dinner table. She inhaled a little deeper than usual. Couldn't really make out the scent. The smoke of the incense was no good either. It was thick and spread through the room evenly, making everything look more grey.Good incense sends its smoke up in bursts of curls, twirling and spinning, bending and stretching, like a group of acrobats and ballet dancers. Making smooth turns like the well chosen words in some of her stories.
Was it really that good, her writing? Wasn't she just being childishly uncritical about her own work? What about her latest 'sequel'? The struggle she went through and her main characters still tiptoed around each other, stiff as garden rakes. She had really overestimated herself when she started that tale. When, when would she ever learn to see her impotence sharply and come down from her cloudy horse? She walked over to her computer. Selected all her stories in the directory. Her finger went over to the delete button. Just then she heard the locks of her guest's suitcase snap shut.
"I'd better leave now. Don't want to keep you from throwing away the rubbish in your life."  He tucked the suitcase under his arm and went for the door. There he turned around one more time.  "And I would stop being so 'honest' and open  if I were you. It makes you a bit of a ... woman with low standards, you see. That will turn away everybody."  His eyes weren't friendly. They were cold as steel.
Her finger didn't touch the provocative button. She needed her hand to support her head as she sank down on the chair behind her desk. Since she was alone, she might as well have a cry now. Through her tears she saw the mess the man had left behind.  Sticky coffee stains mixed with incense ash on her table. The box of the incense on the floor, in the midst of the powdered cream. She picked up the package with two fingers only. Her eyes caught the name of the fragrance he'd used:  "Ingratitude".
With a shock she remembered him. They did know each other well. He was mister Doubt. Just dropping by to make her an uncertain somebody.

Jo.    

☻

Clairvoyance

Maybe I have a very slight telepathic inclination...  but this morning I've discovered that I can even predict the future!

On Saturday October 22 I posted part one of a story, the sequel of Haesito in Medio:   Journey with Unknown Destination . This time I didn't get stuck in the middle, I got stuck at the beginning, haesito in ovo.
I have the tendency to put certain things off: from getting up to doing chores. When I even think about them, I get a weird sensation...  The story I started in October was to help me find out why I have this tendency and how I can get rid of it. I  Introduced a young dog, not properly house trained, to make sure that the main character would be forced to get up and act... but I never wrote down the scene.  Like a nasty chore it just hung around in my head, making no headway at all.
Little did I know... when two weeks ago my son bought a kitten, a young 'persian prince' called Diego...

I decided to 'sleep in' this morning  -sorry, yesterday morning we just passed midnight-.  A decision my pets didn't appreciate. In protest the degus starting throwing the sawdust out of their cages. And the walking furball, beg pardon, the persian prince,  dragged the spillings all over my room -a bedsitter- . If that were all. When the royal highness walked over my face I noticed he smelled bad and his feet were dirty with something that makes you lose your appetite for breakfast. So I cast a glance over the edge of my bed ....  oh no... the prince had scooped some of the crown jewels out of the litter box.  I still wonder how he did that.
Just as I had imagened for my story, the leading actress just had to get up and DO something. Roll up her sleeves, after getting dressed of course, her nighty has no sleeves that can be rolled up-  grit her teeth and start working her way out of the sh.. Literally and  as always it worked figuratively as well. Because the work actually did her a lot of good. When she was finally hosing down the litterbox under the shower, her rotten mood  vanished. Down the drain with the rest of the muck.


Thank you Your Highness, for messing up so much.  I shouldn't have chosen a puppy for my story, but a kitten. 
While I wrtie this, the prince is paying a visit to the family in my 1:12 scale log cabin...

*****

Telepathy?  I've had some experiences and done some experiments that point in that direction. But I guess you can also throw them on the pile of 'coincidences'. Well alright, just one example, the rest I keep under my hat. Marked private.


When I was still living in Haarlem, - a glorious time with the Hells Angels as my back door and next door neighbours - ,  my mother went to a group of amateur poets . Once a week, on tuesday night.
Afterwards she would drop by my place, for a last chat before going to sleep.  There was no set time for her arrival. Sometimes she walked alone from the poets society, or with someone else, or she'd get a ride. At times she stayed with her fellow artists for a drink, other times she'd leave straight away.
I remember it distinctly, one evening, a picture of her shot through my mind. Something was up. Without hesitation I put on my coat and walked out. That is odd. I'm the one who hesitates, especially when negativity is involved. Yet this time, though I was aware that something was up, I was not afraid or stressed. 
Just around the corner, under the railway viaduct, I ran into my mother. It was pretty dark there. And out of that darkness, from the sidewalk,  a motorcyclist appeared, looked right at us and then 'he 'hit' the road.
"Thank God you came looking for me, " my mother said as the motor guy disappeared.  " That man has been following me. Close to the station he even followed me riding his motor on the sidewalk."
In her fear, she had been thinking of me. That's when she made contact.

Rotten, fearful feelings are often called 'presentiments'. But they are not. They are just thoughts, that stick to you because you're in a bad or sad mood. If you give in to that moodyness... then your ideas will become self fullfilling prophecies. That has nothing to do with clairvoyance. Clairvoyance conveys images that do not involve your mood. The picture is short and clear. So clear that it'll stick to you a long time.  But it does not bring along fear. Just info.

Some people believe that the gift of clairvoyance is reserved for a selected few. Just as other special -esoteric- gifts. This is what the theosophists claimed. Rudolf Steiner, once a theosophist himself,  believed that we all are gifted. This caused him to break with theosophy. And hence the name anthroposophy, indicating that all men -anthropos- have special gifts, not just a few, selected by God -Theos- .
It's just that we live our lives too much on autopilot and walk around with our mental eyes closed too often.

My Old Umbrella

My son, the first years of your life,
you and I go together day by day.
Sometimes the sun will shine,
and you'll be frisky, glad and gay.
But at times the light wears out,
the rain is coming in.

I don't know why it is, my boy,
but my umbrella is not as bright and good
as others' you might have seen.
Perhaps God was in a joking mood,
when he handed mine to me?

It opens well and can stand a storm,
but rain keeps seeping through.
We won't stay dry and warm, my boy,
when the clouds are full and blue

Hush, let me share a secret now.
While other kids
keep their neat shields free of stain,
we both sneak out into moonlit nights.
In search of muddy pools,
those remnants of the rain.

We'll turn my 'brella upside down
and when the  moonlight strikes the pool,
we'll sail into the white moon glade.
To enter a world sublime.
Where your soul's  the creator king,
running wild and free

We'll stay until your smile grows strong.
Than we go back, embrace our destiny.
Knowing that when the rain is gone,
there'll  be pools of mud.
just there for you and me.

Mathematics and Love just don't add up

It's in my genes. To live life without complying to the general consensus. I don't recognise it in time. Or may be I just don't understand it. And I don't like acting according to something that I don't understand.

I never received the 'How-to-act-when Guide'. Misdirected, I guess.

Let's give you a nice example of not going by the rule book, performed by a family member: my grandfather, my mother's father. He was born in 1911. He really ignored consensus when he decided to live with a woman born in 1953.

Dear reader, what have you been doing?

I don't need clairvoyance to tell. You have subtracted 1911 from 1953. But why on earth would you subtract my grandfather from a woman he's in love with? My grandfather being the oldest, subtracted from the youngest? That leaves nothing at most. Or in their case... negativity.

They started a relationship, so you should add them up. When they started, they were 74, not a bad number to start a relationship. And when my grandfather died, they were 136. O.K., not a world shattering record. Her fault.

I've had a relationship with someone 3 years younger than me. Ah, you relax now. That is far more decent. But my relationship lasted only two years. Our fight afterwards lasted much longer.

While my grandfather lived 31 years with his partner.

When thinking, talking, gossiping of a relationship please leave your pocket calculator at it's appointed place: in your pocket.

A relationship is something of the heart. If you must apply calculous, apply the right form.

• For starters do not subtract one person from the other. When a person is subtracted from a relationship it means the relationship is over.
• Subtracting is staring at the difference. You know 'subtract 3 from 7' is the same as 'the difference between 3 and 7'. You throw away the resemblances, similarities and parallels. But they fortify a relationship! Don't throw them out.
• In a relationship, people join forces. So adding them up is the logical way to go about it.
• Yes, in most relationships multiplication is only just around the corner.
• Differentiation? Doesn't necessarily have to be the end of a relationship. It might deepen it, expanding the roots. From square to cubic to the n-th level?
• Power ... a good healthy relationship can definitely give both partners a lot of power to express themselves in this world. Trust me. But it's not something you should be after within a relationship.
• Division... not a good thing. Being divided in two camps is not good. But seeing division as sharing... can go too far as well. What if everything is shared, the two becoming one? Sounds 'glib' and boring to me. Or maybe one of them is not really flourishing in this relationship, wearing a mask.

I have just one rule of thumb, when it comes to relationships: 
      it's never wrong to love someone.