Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Living In The Past

Good morning!

This is a fine Spring day here in the Nation's Capital. I had a thought this morning. I have these sometimes because I am a thinking person. Is this life that we are living a continuum of spiritual energy that will endure long after our earthly bodies disappear? What's the difference between your spirit and your soul? Why do we have de ja vu? Are we resting already in death and witnessing our past lives? I sometimes fantasize about my "past" life and imagine that I was here before.

Wait! It's all coming to me in a vision! I think that I was here in America, but I was an immigrant. I believe that I lived in New York or Chicago? I had a love for spicy food, Jazz and stygian after hours spots. As a matter of fact, I was a musician. I wasn't big time though. I played in a couple of local spots around town. I sat in with a couple of big names when needed. I had a terrible nicotine and vodka habit and a thing for voluptuous Dominican women. I settled down for a bit. I started seeeing this woman that lived on the south end of town. She was a Black woman named Sara. She'd just moved to town from Georgia. We spent a great deal of time together. Things between Sara and I got heavy and we moved in together. It wasn't too long before I got her pregnant. We had a daughter. She named our daughter Carmen after Sara's favorite singer, Carmen McCrae. I liked the name. Time passed and Sara and I starting fighting more. We grew further apart. I was always gone and I usually slept all day until my next gig that night. Sara grew tired of my drinking and absence and moved away with Carmen. I never got word of where they went. I always thought that she headed back to Georgia where her parents lived.....Savannah I think, but I wasn't sure?

Years went by and I spent years playing gigs here and there until I found religion. I cleaned myself up and started doing work with a neighborhood church. I was getting older and soon could not do the foot work because of my arthritis. I retired to my apartment and soon had to be relocated to a retirement home at the age of 68. I had spent 3 years in the retirement home until one day I was told that I had a visitor. She was a young woman with a yellow dress on. As she came closer I began to see Sara's face? She came up to me and touched me on the shouldeer. "Hi daddy," she said in a low, but sweet voice. My mouth fell open. It was Carmen! She was a woman now of 28. She was beautiful. She looked just like her mother when we first met. She said that her mother finally told her where I was and how she could get in touch with me before she died. This made me sad. I loved Sara. She was too good for me. Carmen got a place in the city that she could afford and came to visit me often. We grew closer as time went on. She was the final chapter of my life and could not have wished for a better ending.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's sort of cool and distorted at the same time because I too, sometimes I feel that I lived here before and the memories seem all so real.

Sometimes, I sit in bars and soak in the ambience and I feel like I am all a part of the conversations that are going on right then and there.

Those of us who think we have lived before or shall I say have deja vu are apart of a wierd culture of folks. We experience the world and its offerings with passion, openness and straight up FREEDOM and we know that we are apart of something greater (what this is I am still figuring out).Life to us is full of experiences to behold and treaure and we NEVER forget and cherish all of those moments that were not so candid because those are our wounds to healing waiting onthe next bruise. We often see remnants of so called past that seem to cross us right in front of us.

I mean, I remember so vividly getting off the train in Harlem and my man picked me up from the bus station. I was wearing a tight black dress and long pearls my feet were killing me from walking in the pumps (I own those same pumps today and my feet always hurt when I wear them, but for some particular reason, I must have them) Anyway, he picked me up and grabbed me so tightly. He had on a three piece suit and was handsome and a mailboy hat. Damn, he was FINE! He loved me, but the thing is that I loved him too, but in a strange kinda way.

We walked through the middle of uptown stopping for a drink of whiskey and a smoke. Other men in the bar were looking at me, because I was a drinking just as much as he was and they were jealous. Why? Not because I was so fine, but because I was what my man wanted and needed. I needed and wanted him and it was obvious to everyone in the room! They wanted he had and he didn't realized the treasure he possess. Neither did I!

I hated how women looked on slyly and slipped numbers in his pocket and I even thought about cuttin a bitch, but I was a lady. I knew that and I had my biz to take care of . . . my man.
We laughed and my feet were still hurting.

We lasted for a long time, years and years, until one day he came to me and told me that he was in love with someone else and every since then, I never could get him off my mind. He often came to me and I never denied his love, his touch, his passion. I was gone by his mind and not his touch. I loved him and we had a connection that would last all of eternity.

Today, as I live I still search for his soul in my air. Take care.
Hey, anybody out there gotta three piece suit and what to meet me for scotch in Harlem?

Have a lat 20's kind of day, folks!!!

Stephen A. Bess said...

Anonymous, that was an interesting story. I can see the image of this woman so well. Those seem like romantic times in Harlem in the late 20's. The whole Renaissance and the progressive Black people and their Arts movement. It seems like the only place that I could've lived as a Black man during that period in America. By the way, I'll meet you in Harlem around 10:00pm. I'll be wearing a blue pin striped suit. :)

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