À bedtime story for all you night owls... Magical realism meets cosmic philosophy meets a good old fashioned love story, meets tragedy. I think the only elements this is missing is sex and humour, anyways, enjoy and good night... Bonne nuit... Guten nacht... Goeie nacht... Buenas noches... Nos da...
THE TABLE
The grain of the wood was fine yet brutal. The varnish worn down to the veneer and dull. Lifeless...except that this table was far from lifeless...the opposite almost of inanimate, soaked in the tears, spilt feelings and bleeding hearts of too many souls to recount. Each sweaty palm that clutched at its smooth, round edges leaving their mark forever, the flavour of the feelings and situations of each and every human soul it, or rather she had encountered...
Stained with the ink of those many metaphorical cards laid down, she is animated bordering on sentient and cannot help but scream out to each soul that visits... show them truths, if the soul bearers are lacking wisdom or insight... show them that fortune favours the brave if they are acting from fear... show them love, the power of self love and universal love if they are alone and broken. This table is moved by the simplicity of the plight innate within the human condition. A plight, as she has come to understand that is as futile as it is necessary. Moved she is to silent, motionless tears.
To sit at her table was to connect deeply and intimately with our inner voice, and all who found themselves there were moved somehow, often inexplicably to themselves, to see and feel the realness of their emotions, the clarity in their minds. Many correct choices were made, many incorrect alliances broken and many trifles resolved. Thus was the power of this divinely animated object, carved in wood... wood from a tree as old as it was steeped in history...the story of how and where this tree fell, poignant as it is, being one for another time though...
One bright crisp spring afternoon, two lovers meet. They have had their first row, conducted drunkenly and hastily and very fitting of souls so young and tender and easily bruised by suggestion. It was a whole week ago, which considering prior to that they had been day and night lovers for the best part of the previous 3 weeks, this gap seemed like millennia. They felt like strangers. To themselves as much as each other.
They enter this dimly lit café separately and meet at the seating desk. The waiter directs them immediately to The Table (perhaps he knows). As soon as they sit down, their eyes meet, for the first time since they parted ways a week ago and somehow they both begin to soften. Their hands rested awkwardly upon the table, neither of them wanting to touch because they are hurt, angry, unwilling/unable to concede, but both of them filled with a sudden desire to...
He watches her cheeks flush slightly and can see the pulse evident in her neck... she is moved...anxious...ablaze with emotions... he can almost see them coming off her, imagines he can feel them piercing his skin, like warm sharp tendrils, penetrating his heart and mind... he doesn’t normally watch her with such immersion but something he can’t quite explain has forced him to focus upon the minutiae of her gait. He hasn’t seen her, really seen her, in all her glory like this before now. Not even whilst they made love or fucked as she preferred to call it. Despite her guard, she is open and in torment.
‘You’re not even listening to me, are you?’
She shouts this at him, jolting him out of his reverie, and he is speechless. She quickly yet clumsily pulls her coat back on, picks up her bag and walks out of the cafe, slamming the door behind her.
Realising the urgency required, our young Knight dashes out after his fair maiden and says those 3 magical word; I love you and also the other (perhaps more important) 3... I am sorry.
Sometimes it just takes a nudge of empathy for people to see beyond their own egos and frailties and feel what is actually important.
People come and people go... The Table sees many lovers, of all kinds, for she makes no distinction between romantic love/rs and platonic or familial relationships... they are all lovers, they all are seeking love and to love. To understand and to be understood. But she does have her favourites. Every now and again she is so taken aback by the strength of the feelings bought to the table that she is able to stay with them for many hours after they have gone, left her boundary and exited the room.
It was a cold, mid winter afternoon. The wind was high and daylight had not quite taken hold that day, the greyness bleaching out all attempts at light breaking through. A woman was sat nervously at The Table, coat still on and trying not to look at her phone.
“7 minutes late is fine”
She keeps telling herself but is anxious because, well, that’s just in her nature. Her large, dark eyes dart around the room nervously.
“He said he’d be wearing a red beret... was that just a joke... one of those, I’m not actually coming, it is ALL a big joke, typa jokes?”
But before she is able to continue along those lines, the door to the cafe flies open and although she cannot quite make out the face or shape of the person who has entered, she sees a glimpse of a red beret and something inside her registers her previous internal dialogues as fear and anxiety talking and she quickly adjusts her nervous demeanour to suit a woman more relaxed and composed...
Mr Red takes off his glasses and rubs them on the bottom of his shirt to clear the splashes of rain. He had missed his connecting bus to reach this strange and distant part of town he had never been to before and seemed like it was lost somehow in time and space. He does not do running generally does Mr Red, so he was flustered, and on top of feeling anxious that he was going to be late he also worried that this strange and oddly alluring woman he had met on a techy geeky forum about Mac issues, wasn’t going to turn up. They had struck up a bizarre intimacy around a similar problem they were both were having that no one had had any advice for and it had resulted in him asking her to meet. Although he wasn’t sure she meant it when she agreed and hadn’t answered his text when he realised he was going to be late.
With his glasses now clean, he was able to survey the room. He had had no description of her physicality – her avatar on the forum was a picture of some abstract looking horror gothic art yet he somehow had a picture of her in his mind, although until the moment he laid his eyes upon her (and knew immediately that it was her) he couldn’t have put it into words. As soon as he turned towards the corner of the room though, he saw her... long black hair covering most of her face, lace fingerless gloves thinly veiling her long, dark delicate fingers, hanging taut in a shape suggesting complexity and depth of thought. It was she. The red coat matching his beret for vibrancy looked somehow incongruous with the sombreness of the rest of her general appearance but it was inviting. So he walked towards her...
“Mr Red I take it?”
“Ha, please, call me Ray...and you are?”
But as our Red Ray takes his seat, he is consumed by a feeling so terrifying that he is unable to hear our protagonist say her name... a feeling he is unable to fully distinguish. Pain...? Regret...? Fear...? Urgency...? Love...? He looks up to see this tenebrous lady smiling at him with eyes of onyx and silver... he knew immediately that she had to be a Diana or Diane...
“Sorry, I missed that... what was your name again?”
“If you are sure you are listening this time, my name is Diaochan...pleased to meet you Ray”
Holding her long dark delicate arm out and fixing him with her glare, Ray takes her hand and shakes it... his other hand resting moistly upon the table. She feels cool under his skin and he is so distracted by her beauty and grace that he forgets about the odd sensation he had when sitting down.
Relaxing into each other’s company, Ray and Diaochan open up much more than either of them are used to doing... our table knows how prescient it is that they hit it off and understand each other sooner rather than later... she sees something dark and terrible in their future... the potential of a missed opportunity and then a regret and bitterness (of the kind that can affect generations) once it is too late... so after sharing a rather large slice of Black Forest Gateaux and a bottle of Rioja, the pair disappear into the early evening... to be clear, love at first sight generally does not exist, only in fairy tales. But our table had witnessed and facilitated more fairy tales than most sentient creatures could lay claim to. Not all fairy tales end with happy ever after though I’m afraid.
3 years later Diaochan dies... of a rare and undiagnosed heart condition. Caused no doubt by her natural disposition to worry and anxiety, which generally led her to put most potential suitors off... she had learned to live with this loneliness and isolation but it weighed heavy upon her soul. Somewhere in a parallel universe, another Ray had become uneasy with her darkness, her intensity...an intensity that delayed their getting together by 6 months and their affair had not lasted another... but not from a lack of feeling on either side, more from an unwillingness on both sides to understand and empathise with the other’s position. In this parallel universe Ray has a fling with his best friend’s sister and as she falls pregnant, he feels duty bound to stay with her. Broken hearted Diaochan flees to Scotland, to live alone in an isolated cottage. Both lovers are apart yet still very much in love... not daring to do anything about it... upon hearing of her death, that Diaochan died (as she had lived for the previous 2 years) alone, Ray is beyond heartbroken. He never forgave himself and the unhappiness and bitterness he felt spread from his heart, to his now wife and child... our table saw all of this... and although Diaochan still died, she died happy and our young lover was saved from that bitterness and regret.
So perhaps the next time you are sat at a table... due to talk deeply on whatever level life may have thrown at you, know that the voice of truth lies within, if you just open up and let go... let go of that tired saggy relationship that has dragged you down and buried you for years. Let go of feeling worthless, let go of sadness, let go of tears... but also let go of inhibition, let go of bitterness, let go of fear... kiss if the feeling is right, don’t shift focus as s/he looks you in the eye. Dilation will flood you with swollen light, if you allow it. If you want it. If the pit of your stomach is alight and smoke rises from the damp hay of fields gone by. Dance with it till daybreak, till fire rises from your thighs... till silhouettes dance on walls, till lava moves in tides... till all you can feel is moonlight...
