#18 - The woman and the room (first published 11/23/20

I enter a dark room.  There is an old, very dim, filament light hanging from the ceiling and there is diffused light coming from the edges of the opening into the room that has a thick rug hanging off the rafter.  As my eyes adjust, there are candles along one wall, most of them just barely alive as they are melted flat.  There are some red flickering objects which upon further study are the butts of incense sticks stuck between wooden slats in the walls.  I can not see anyone else in the room except the woman who solicited me to come in with her.  


The smell of the room is overwhelming.  I can smell burning wax and incense,  normally inviting smells, but not this day.  They make me gag at first.  There’s also a mustiness and the smell that comes with old and dark places.  And there is a certain smell from the woman who brought me here, a smell I can not quite make out.  And perhaps I am smelling garbage, cow dung, bird droppings, or the feces from the monkeys roaming everywhere on the outside.  There are Marigold blossoms which I would think would help, but do not.    I do not know, but the odor is staggering at first but somehow this sense is numbed after a short time, maybe out of survival.   


The silence in the room is contrasted with the noise on the outside.  But the noise on the outside fades in and out as people walk by and then walk away.   I assume much of the talking comes from the tour groups that seem to come and go in waves.   I can hear distant horns, bells, and all the sounds of the city obviously somewhat in the distance.  In those brief periods where there is no talking directly outside, I feel keener alertness to the sounds within the building, a certain creakiness of this old building.  I have a heightened sensitivity to all the sounds and the brief silent interludes where I feel more peace.  


After a few minutes of just standing there, the lady motions me to the far corner of the room.  I sit on the wooden floor and she pulls out a small stool from her pack and sits on it.  We sit silently for a very long time.  I stare at her.  My outside reaction was of an old woman but now that I’m sitting and looking across at her, I see she perhaps is not that old.  Her face is weathered with pronounced cheekbones but her eyes and mouth look now look younger than her skin.  Perhaps it is the diffused lighting.  As I sit, I see her many rings, bracelets, and necklaces.  She is adorned with sparkles and beads.  Whatever it is, she has a mystical quality.  


She waits sometimes before making a sound.  She starts making sounds in an almost whisper.  I try to understand what she is saying.  Then I realize she is chanting, or humming and not talking to me.   She closes her eyes and rolls her neck and head gently around.  Finally, she whispers to close my eyes.  She continues to chant and as she does, the outside sounds and smells disappear.  In this most strange place, I am feeling lightheaded, almost like I’m floating.  I’m in a place where dreams and reality come together.  


When she finally does whisper to me, she seems to tell me accurately things in my life.   She tells me I will meet my life partner after my journey and that I will have a long life.  I do not know how long I was in the room and with her.  Perhaps only minutes and perhaps hours.  Perhaps I heard what I wanted to hear and remember what I wanted to remember.  But that day, that place,  had a profound and lasting effect on my life. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A memory about pets (Published Sept 13, 2021)

 The first pet I was aware of was my parents dog Taffy, a Chihuahua. Taffy died when I was around six and my mom almost immediately went to the pound and got a dog named Jinxy, I'm not sure why the name and if we named her or if she came with that name. Jinxy was a white, with some brown, Fox Terrier mix. She was a great dog but had two problems. The first is that she always urinated when anyone pet her. And when the door bell rang and she ran to the door excited, there was always an accident including urinating on several guests shoes. Because of this, Jinxy was confined to the service porch with our washer and dryer or the backyard. This leads to the second issue - She loved breaking out of the yard and run (sort of like Almas). Not to long after we got Jinxy, my parents did get another Chihuahua, which they named Chico. Jinxy was "my dog" while Chico was my parents. The dogs got along well and I've got cute pictures of them laying together. However, Chico always ha...
Read more

THE PACKAGE

  THE PACKAGE One day this package just arrived on our doorstep.  It did not look like the customary Amazon package we get at our door many days each month.   It had no return address, and my name was typed on an address label with no logo.  There was no postage on the wrapping and no indication that it was from FedEx, UPS, or any of the other courier services.  Perhaps a neighbor dropped off a gift, but why then the formal typed label?    The package was rather large and rather heavy.  There was no noise from shaking it so it was wrapped rather tightly.  There clearly was a box inside the wrapping.  My first inclination was to open it immediately but then I decided to wait for Susan in case she knew what it was or ordered it.  Perhaps she had ordered it specifically for me or for some occasion?   Susan arrived back from the market.  She had no idea what it was.  She had not ordered anything. Susan laughed a...
Read more

The Summer after the Summer of Love, Part I (Published Augst 23, 2021)

It was the Summer after the Summer of Love, 1968, I was eighteen, and five of us jammed into my 1961 Chevy Corvair and headed to San Francisco, the then action spot of the world as far as the five of us teens were concerned. Interstate 5 was not yet open all the way to "SF" as we in Los Angeles called it. There were almost no has stations and the freeway would stop and start taking you onto the old California Highway 33. It was along one these stretches of Highway 33, reminiscent of a John Steinbeck novel, that the car ran out of gas. I remember that Louise, my high school prom date was already not in the best of moods and running out of call in the middle of nowhere land did not help. Besides, it was after dark and about 110 degrees outside, at least so it seemed. The cars in those days had no air conditioning, or at least my old Corvair did not. After taking the rath from everyone in the car for not filling it sooner, an old man in 1950's pickup came along and offered m...
Read more