“Hard it is to train the wind…” - The Dhammapada
I was smoking seated at the round-top table in the center of the room. As I often was at that time. She was too. It was just me and her.
She had a thing for Lord Byron. I had a thing for women who liked poetry. From the outside her life seemed like a poem. Everything in rhyme.
In a single line she could knock you cold. She could perplex you and make everything clear in the same sentence. She said a lot of things I’ll never forget. Still, as is always the case, she said more things that I’ll never remember.
Now when I think of her it’s always smoking, seated at the round-top table in the center of the room. She reciting Byron and speaking Geranium. Me, reading Baudelaire trying not to smudge ash on the pages.
At some point I put down the book. She gave up on the Geranium and we sat in a warm pause. Time stood still.
“... I’m having trouble getting off the ground,” I said.
She said “you must be talking about your performing?”
I said “yes of course. It always is isn’t it?”
She said “no, not always. But you have a way of jumping into the middle of a conversation that ended weeks ago with no explanation.”
“So I’ve been told…” I said. “It just feels like there’s a one-way-wind blowing, but it’s blowing in my face.”
There was a brief pause, but just then a gust of wind blew and the doors flew open. The house was ancient and was designed for airflow so this sort of thing happened a lot. But I couldn’t help but feel like there was some otherworldly connection. The timing was surreal.
A slow smile stole her face.
She said “that’s the beautiful thing about the wind isn’t it? That it can change directions…”