Rosezac (Mouse Over)

Dear Kim,

I’ve always loved the idea of the Rorschach test. You know, those blotchy ink drawings that shrinks and guidance counselors like to show and ask you to interpret. And based on what you say, they identify your projections.

(Kim: I like the joke about the patient who saw all kinds of sexual innuendos in the blots. The shrink said that the patient had sex on his mind.

"My mind," he said "I didn't make these pictures."

When I took these and other tests as a kid because I was not doing well in school they told my mother that I didn't like my father. That was a surprise to me...and my dad and I laughed about that.)

So now I am going to tell you a story about signs. About things that appeared in my psychic landscape that I read as signs.

Yesterday, I wrote to you about the literal exchange that I had with Pseudonym about how she wants to end our relationship as lovers and move into a friendship.

(Kim: Right (as the expression goes). It seems so rare when lovers can be friends. I bet the same people who try to do this are entrenched with all kinds of clutter. Things that they no longer need.)

That was one kind of story. Here is another.

When I was at Pere Marquette Park on Sunday, Pseudonym called my cell phone. We had the mutually frustrating experience of trying to hear each other with bad reception.

I sensed it was important so I said through the crackling phone that I would call her back.

I got on the road where we continued to cut in and out.

Finally, I just pulled off the highway and wound up in front of some train tracks to try to call.

The area was empty. Just after I turned off the ignition, a light flashed, a whistle blew and a train passed through.

I called her and she said she wanted to talk in person and preferably before she went out that night. As I was easily an hour away and not up for another potential scene, I took a few deep breaths, explained the situation and suggested that if it was important, it was ok to tell me on the phone.

(Kim: In my mind the jury is still out whether we are just listening to coincidences, or whether everything is interconnected. Linda is reading a book called "the Field" which is all about the scientific studies about how we "communicate" by generating minute light vibrations.)

And that is when she told me that she no longer wanted to be together.

Now I know that the world does not exist for my personal pleasure or convenience, although on a gorgeous day, I am hard-pressed to think about why it does not. But sometimes, I feel like I am a radio and if I am finely tuned, I can hear various frequencies that are being channeled.

Or maybe I feel like an early Polish mystic for whom the universe unfolds in a series of signs that point to this path and that.

Signs...

How perfect that we couldn’t hear each other because the phone cut in and out.

How perfect that the only language that she and I seem to have at our mutual disposal made no sense.

How perfect that I got off the highway and literally said to her, “I have no idea where I am. I am in the middle of nowhere.”

How perfect that as I was stopping, literally turning off my engine, she told me that she wanted to end our relationship.

How perfect that, as she was telling me that, a light flashed, signal sounded and a train passed by in front of my eyes.

My past? My present? My future? Going where? I had no idea.

How perfect that, having gotten off the highway, I got lost and wound up at a gas station in Jennings where a very nice African American man dressed in hip hop with his little girl took the time to patiently and explicitly tell me how to get back to the Central West End.

How perfect that before the phone call and the train and the getting lost, I was driving along the Great River Road filling my belly with breath, singing with Stevie Wonder, marveling at the swoop of the eagles and the glitter of the water and thinking, “Yes, life is good.”

The study of semiotics is signs. And signs are not unilateral.

(Kim: If I could be a grouch, I'd say that on a planet where only random events occurred (no cause and effect) there would be lots of coincidences that people would attribute to mystical causes. We'd soon have all kinds of religion, and people would eagerly give 1/10 of income to these organizations.)

I read everything that happened as highly symbolic of the difficulty of communication with Pseudonym, despite repeated attempts.

That we have reached a fork in the road. That I do not know where I am going. That I literally am lost.

(Kim: I don't see you as being loss...just that you don't know where you are and that you believe you are loss. Look at it this way. An eagle watches someone aimlessly walking in circles in a forest would (from her vantage point) correctly describe that person as being loss, but the person themself would know exactly where she was (i.e. in a forest walking in circles.) It is when we become the eagle looking at ourselves that we use words like "I am loss.")

That some kind person will help me find my way again. (Kim: I hope that person will be you.) That I will make it home.

And that there was breathtaking beauty to be found before and there will be again. (Kim: Both beauty and sometimes pain.)

Later,

Joan

Tuesday, Jan 10, 2006

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