7/18/1999 Gh Ashbrook
Name pronunciations:
Djiane: [g-(as in giraff)-eye-ann]
&
Hennie: [hen-knee]
Djiane put a small piece of the bread in her mouth and chewed it slowly, "It’s not bad," she said. "Now you try some of this," and she carved off a chunk of her whisky, cream cheese, asparagus, raisin, crape and flopped it down on Hennie’s bread plate. "Good?"
Hennie scooped it up, trying to keep it all on her fork, and took a bite. "Yeah, that is good. It’s weird too." She grinned.
"Weird? Here, try a sip of this. It’s from Greece, or Egypt, or one of those places. Maybe China." And she reached her hand across the table.
Hennie took the tall pottery mug from her. First she felt the water with her little finger to see how hot it was, then she took a gulp into her mouth. Her face lost all pallor, and she looked around as if she were looking for a place to spit it out, but then she stopped moving her head and she squeezed her eyes shut and puckered her mouth and wrinkled up her face, and just sat like that. At last she swallowed it, but she held her mouth open and breathed slowly and heavily. "What, is, that stuff?" she asked.
"It’s a tea made from this herb called Horehound. You can get it in bags at health food stores. You think it needs more honey, right?"
"I... I don’t have words for how awful that was. It was beyond the most disgusting thing I’ve ever tasted." Hennie stared at her cloth napkin, she looked deep in sober thought, as if scanning all her files for something to compare the experience to.
"One of the cool things about it," Djiane said, all excited, "Is that the taste completely goes away in a few seconds. It’s like that green stuff you get with sushi."
"Wasabe,"
"Yeah, exactly. Has the taste left you mouth yet?"
"Maybe a little. Not really." She looked sullied.
"Well, you look better now. You have some of your color back. In you cheeks? Your breathing normally."
"I don’t understand. Why would you do that to yourself? Does it cure something?"
Djiane shrugged and took a big mouthful of the tea and swallowed it. She shuddered and twisted her upper body and squeezed her eyes closed, and then sat back, relaxed, smiled, took a deep breath and fluttered her eyes. "You really don’t think it’s good? It’s so good."
"No, it really isn’t."
"Try some more."
"No. At least give me a few minutes. Add some honey to that, or something. Your gonna to hurt yourself."
"Eat some more of your chickpea stuff, sweeten your pallet. Anyway," she said, holding the steaming mug with both hands, and blowing on it, "Like I started saying before, I don’t feel comfortable around Robby around green doors. It’s the weirdest thing. I just can’t relax. I don’t like it. I’m always on guard and I find myself saying the strangest things; things that I don’t think are at all like me to say, you know? But I’ve known about the green door thing for a while. It didn’t really seem like a problem because we don’t have any green doors in our place. But now there’s something weird going on with toasters too."
"Hold it. You don’t like green doors? Is that why you started bugging out when we went to see that Egyptian exhibit last June?"
"Yeah. But back then I didn’t know what was going on. I just knew green doors were starting to tweak me."
"I don’t get it. Why green doors? Why not red. Are you hypersensitive to green or something? What about trees and grass and stuff."
"No, no. It’s like an association with a bad memory. Like a really bad memory. Except it sort of isn’t my memory."
"So... you think it’s something past-life?"
"Well, yeah. You see, I went to Dr. Petreiv, the hypnotic regressing guy, and he video taped me going through this scenario-"
"When did you do this?"
"Like three days ago."
"Oh."
"It’s sort of scary watching yourself say things you don’t remember saying. So I went through this thing, where I explained that I was a boy working in a bread shop in Rome, well, in a Roman controlled suburb of Alexandria in Egypt, although ‘suburb’ might not be the right word, anyway. He regressed me back to this one day when I got to the bakery early to sweep up the shop. So I was just there, sweeping and cleaning and tidying up, oh, and the doors in the shop that went back to the kitchen were these big green double doors, so that’s where the door comes in."
"Hey, slow down."
"Ok, but listen. You see, the building where the bread shop was, was a temple before it was bought by the bread people."
"What kind of temple?"
"I don’t know, something I’d never heard of. But so this one morning when I was sweeping up, I heard these quiet chimes behind the green doors. So I pushed the doors back to see what it was, and right on this big table, where the baker would make the bread, there was this thing. It looked like a half a sphere, and it was spinning. And it was bright on the outside, like really bright. I had to squint to keep from being blinded. It really looked like it was going to fall over, because it was only half a sphere, but it was spinning just like the other half was there somewhere. It was spinning sort of slow, just leisurely swinging around, and then slowly it began spinning faster and faster. And it started to make this humming sound, and then that chime sound started coming from all the pots and utensils hanging on the walls. And the spinning thing was the only light in the room, because the shutters were shut, so it was like a strobe sending this bright strip over everything. Then out of nowhere I started seeing other people standing around the room, but they would only be there for a flash. Most of them were wearing robes. Some of them didn’t have any clothes on at all, and some were part animal and part person. Some looked like they were standing still, some looked like they were in the middle of a dance. Then this person, all robed up, appeared who didn’t just go away. Who ever it was walked right up to me and proceeded to tell me how to bake oatmeal bread. And they made me repeat the recipe to them. It was just a normal recipe though. Then this other person appeared and said the first person was trying to trick me. Then that person told be how to bake banana bread, and made me repeat the recipe the same way. Then another person appeared, walking out from behind the big table, and said I should learn how to make water bread. But the only ingredient in that bread was water."
"Why would this make you scared of green doors?"
"Just listen, I’m getting to that part. So at this point I started looking at the spinning thing on the table, which I nearly forgot all about. All these other people kept appearing in the room, and they tried to talk to me, but then they just started talking with eachother when they found I wouldn’t repeat the recipes back to them. But I found that depending on how I looked at the spinning thing, it changed how the people acted. If I started looking at the people, they would talk louder and start moving around, and if I only looked at the ball thing they would just stand around quietly. So I figured the people weren’t really there. They were like a gate or something, you know. I tried taking a step toward the spinning thing, but this huge stirring spoon came off the wall and I had to step back again or it would have flattened me. So I just squinted and looked at it. I felt like I was beginning to vibrate inside. It was like my brain and body were starting to separate into pieces which I didn’t even know I had, and the pieces started to shake, or it felt like that, like they were resonating, and they started to come apart. Almost like taking a beach and having all the sand grains drift away from eachother."
"Then you wouldn’t have much of a beach."
"Well, that’s what I thought was happening to me, I thought I was just falling to pieces, but when I drifted away from being me there was something else there. I don’t know how to explain it though. It was... big, that’s all I can remember, or say. But then I started coming back together, and I caught one last glimpse of the spinning thing, and then it disappeared. So I went back and finished sweeping and cleaning and getting the place ready for the day. I opened the shutters, and the sun came in because it had just started coming up. And then the baker came in. And he started really yelling at me, and I couldn’t figure out why. And then his wife came in, and she came over the stood in front of me and told him not to take it out on me, that I had nothing to do with it. Then the two of them started fighting with eachother, screaming and hollering. And finally he went to the wall and got this big scythe, and he held it up threateningly, he wanted her to take back something she’d said. But she just stood there and she wouldn’t take it back. So he swung at her. I don’t know if he meant to hit her or just scare her, but he cut her head clean off and she fell back and sprayed all over those green doors. Then the Roman police came in, I guess they heard the yelling, and the baker started threatening them with the scythe. He backed them out the door, and he was still hollering like I’ve never heard anyone holler. And I was just standing there alone in the shop, and I could hear the baker and the soldiers yelling outside. Then I heard something else from behind those green doors. It sounded like a baby. So I pushed the doors back one more time, and right on the big baking table was a baby in a bread basket, crying. So I grabbed the baby, and went out the back door, and took the alleyway out to the street. And I just started walking down the street with the baby. I looked behind me and the baker was still in a mad rage keeping the soldiers away from him. But by this time more soldiers had come, so he had at least twenty guards surrounding him, with swords and spears and shields and bows. And then I heard the guards sort of yell, like soldiers do, and all of a sudden I didn’t hear him yell anymore. And according to what I said under that hypnotic regression I kept the baby and traveled north to where Europe is now.
"Wow. Did you ever tell Robby this?"
"Yeah, he said I’m full of it. He seemed sort of upset. He kept saying how he didn’t understand how anyone could ‘believe in any of that stuff.’ He kept saying that over and over. I think he should go and get regressed himself, but the chances are... yeah."
"How could he say that? What a creep. I think that’s why I split up with Hermon. I really didn’t think he’d be like that because he went hiking all the time. But there’s something he didn’t get. He just couldn’t... I don’t know. I don’t know what causes people to get so weirded out by stuff, just because it isn’t ‘scientific sounding’ enough, or whatever it is. But Mortai’s really cool about this stuff. You should tell him what you just told me, and see what he says about it."
"Why do you always go out with guys with weird names?"
"The names aren’t the half of it. Did I ever tell you about the guy I was going with who got caught in a reference web?"
"No, what’s a reference web?
"I don’t know if that’s really what you call it, but, this guy, I think his name was Eb, this was back in middle school so some of the details are a bit hazy. Ok, you know that saying, ‘it’s a small world.’ That kind of thing’s happened to you right?
"It happens to everyone doesn’t it?"
"I think it does. Anyway, that’s the specific kind of sincronicity I’m talking about; where out of a hundred or a thousand people or places you hear one you already know. And it makes sense that ideas have some kind of gravity, or a memory or something, but this guy got stuck somehow. And from there on everything he heard was part of this closing net of information. There were a hand full of books, and songs, a few names and a bunch of symbols, and no matter where he went or what he did, that’s all he would hear or see."
"Weird."
"Yeah. Part of what really irritated him was that he knew that a lot of people would think this was ‘an amazing paranormal ability.’ But it wasn’t an ability, it was like his life was shrinking out and touching the world at fewer and fewer places, or at fewer and fewer ideas. Because, you know, a sincronicity is supposed to be something improbable occurring, some connection; something outside what would normally be feasible. This was just the opposite. He was trapped inside instead of jumping outside."
"So what happened."
"He disappeared. I mean he really disappeared. Like, one Monday his parents didn’t remember him. There weren’t even any records of him existing at all. I think he knew it was going to happen too. The place where he touched the world just got smaller and smaller, and I guess he popped out, or fell off, or became a black hole, or something, I don’t know."
"That sucks."
"Sort of. I mean yeah, it sucks. But he wasn’t a very interesting person, and he was sort of a control freak, like subconsciously, I think. In fact, for a while I had this theory that all this happened to him as a direct result of how profoundly boring and uptight he was. I mean if you aren’t interested in stuff, and if you aren’t interesting, I figure something like that’s bound to happen sooner or later." Having said that, Hennie grabbed a piece of herbed bread and dipped it in humus and took a big bite. "So what’s this thing about your toaster you were talking about before?"
"Well, about a week ago I had this dream where Robby and I were camping in the woods. And we go camping, or at least we used to go camping, so it makes sense for me to dream about that. And in the dream we were just walking around the campsite, setting up the tent, normal stuff, and then I see Robby go over to the tent and get his bag, and take out this big old toaster, like the one he has at home in real life. I asked him why he brought it, and he said, that it made him feel more comfortable to have it close to him. At first I thought he was kidding. But he sat down on a log, put the toaster down beside him, and just sat there. Then a few nights later I had this dream where I was in the house all alone at night, and I heard something outside, so I got a flashlight and went out back to check it out, which is something I would never really do, but anyway, when I went out back I found Robby walking around with that toaster in his arms, just walking around all the trees in the back yard; and when he saw me he just waved and said ‘hi,’ like everything was normal. And then I had one more dream where I was driving around, somewhere, and I pulled up next to this car at a traffic light, and Robby was driving, and there was a toaster in the passenger seat of the car, with a seat belt around it. And then when the light changed and he drove on, there were two toasters in the back seat, and one was in a baby’s car seat."
"That’s ridiculous."
"But listen to this. Last night he and I were in the living room talking about his going to some game with his friends, and then he went into the kitchen because he said he was going to get something to drink. And I walked over because I was going to tell him to get me something too, and I swear I saw him petting the toaster, or something. Stroking it."
"Ugh, that’s disgusting! Kick him out. Ughghgh."
"It’s his place."
"Well move out. Jeeze, I thought you were just dreaming about some metaphor of Robby being more comfortable with machines. Yuck."
"Yeah, so did I. I really don’t know what to do. You know?"
"Well you could start by moving out. Like, today. Just crash at my place. And do yourself a favor, don’t even so much as hug that guy ever again. I never really understood why you two went out in the first place, and I wasn’t ever crazy about him, but... no. Just move out. Stay in my den, or wherever you want."
"Thanks."
"Sure. There’s no reason why you should have to live with some guy who has a toaster fetish. That’s one of your inalienable rights or something. How do people get so whacked out?"
"Are you sure it couldn’t just be me though?"
"Even if Robby doesn’t have a literal toaster fetish, he’s still scum in my book. You should listen to your dreams, they have to be telling you something when they get stark like that."
"I just get the feeling I’m going to be living in an empty house some day, because everything dredges up some past life trauma, or reminds me about something I don’t like about someone else. It’s like one of those dreams where you’re running away from something, but I’m living it. Or I would be living it, or will be. Or whatever, I don’t want to be living it. But that isn’t just me though. It seems like a lot of what happened to people in the past was traumatic; I mean it would be traumatic to someone today. But it seems like they didn’t mind as much back then. It’s almost like they were numb to it. I mean you hear about living conditions and working conditions and hygiene and life expectancy and the rates at which women died during child birth and you wonder how they did it? You know? And you think: if everyone has connections to other people’s lives in the past, it’s like you have to get over other people’s problems, and usually things people never started dealing with. But at the same time, when people have connections to past lives, why is it always traumatic. Why isn’t it ever the opposite. Like ‘in my past life I had a really good day, and so now I just smile for no apparent reason.’ Have you ever heard anyone say that? Why can’t that happen too?"
"I think it happens when you love someone."
"Yeah, I guess."
"Look at it this way, it’s like with that kid Eb. If you don’t try, if you don’t work at it, you’ll find yourself falling into things which seem like an unusual torture. Things you’d never think could really happen to you. But if you do work at it, it can go the other way."
"But how do you work at it?"
"Well there are two really old questions, older than any universe in fact; one is that question you just asked, the other one is how to get someone to ask that question. So I guess that means you’re half-way there."
"So what’s the answer."
"Yeah right."
"Hey, that’s not fair."
"Well how should I know? Let’s try it together. We’ll step through it. Ok, what was Eb’s problem?"
"He wasn’t interested, and he tried to control things, and also he wasn’t interesting, he didn’t do anything."
"And what’s the opposite of that?"
"Not trying to control what happens, and being interested in things, and doing things. But that’s just three more questions."
"Sort of. The ‘controlling things’ part is old hash. That’s Buddhism right? And Taoism? I don’t know how much you can be told about how to stop trying to control things. The next one is ‘being interested.’ Again, it seems like a personal trial and error, plod-your-way-along kind’a thing. The last question is a little different, I think. It’s the ‘What do you do?’ question. The first too are sort of fuzzy, but ‘doing things’ is tricky cuz you can’t fudge on it."
"But that was my original question, "how do you work at it." In fact it’s worse than my original question because it misses the point of what I was trying to get at: getting things to go the other way."
"Well, that’s what you get for ask’n someone who doesn’t know. Trying looking again. You want to know how you can work at it. You see the problem as being that things dredge up unfairly unpleasant memories or associations. I’m in complete agreement with you about the toaster, but I still don’t know why you want to run away from that green door thing? Quite often when your looking for something, it’s somewhere in front of your face. You just have to put it together differently. I’d say you could find a lot of things that go the other way in that Alexandrian Bakery. You just have to piece it apart, or together, that’s the work part. Do you want some more tea?"
"Yeah, sure. What do you want, I'll go down and get it?"
"Get me a cup of that Horehound stuff. But bring the whole honey jar too. I’m eating my words here."