Billie Holliday On Sunday Mornings
Henry Miller played the piano on Sunday mornings. His parents would lie in bed, awake, and would knock on the wall. That was the signal. Still in his pajamas and dressing gown, young Henry sat down in front of the old family piano, cracked his fingers and forgot everybody and everything surrounding him. He put all his fantastic genius and vitality in the notes and he was able to let them fly, just like he would be able to give words wings as an adult and a writer. Hitting the piano pedals with bare feet, he was perfectly at peace with the world. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he knew what was to come; he knew his wouldn’t be an easy life, he knew that his genius would single him out from the rest of the people, that is gift would be a blessing as well as a burden. That’s why he praised his Sunday mornings spent at the piano so much and that’s why he decided to remember them in his Tropic Of Capricorn.
I am thinking of Henry Miller while listening to Billie Holliday this morning. I often listen to her when I’m home and I need to chill. I listen to a lot of jazz stuff when I need to chill. Needless to say, I listened to nothing but jazz in the weeks following my trip to Saskatchewan.
It should have been a perfectly ordinary period but I felt restless. I was restless when I was at university to see my students and work on my books, I was restless when I got home at night. I would pace up in down in my almost empty apartment, a glass of whisky in my hand, the TV on with the sound down, jazz coming out of my stereo. Something had seen the light of day, deep down inside me, and was feeding on my anxiety. I couldn’t help being jealous of Gwendolyn’s father; my wife and kid had moved to L.A. two years before, and, even if we had never talked about the possibility, I was reasonably sure he didn’t want to live with me. I was reasonably sure he seldom thought of me, too. Therefore, once I got back to Saskatchewan, I resolved to phone him once a week and try to play a more active role in his life. I knew I was not good at it and I had never been, but I would do my best and learn. During our awkward calls, he listened politely and answered all my questions; I could picture his curly blond hair, his chubby hand holding the phone, his freckled face bearing a slightly embarrassed expression, his glasses. He was only eight, and yet he understood. I’ll rephrase it. He was only eight, that’s why he understood. After the things that have happened to me, I must have learned this at least.
Even though I would have never admitted it, I thought of Linda more that I ought to have. She was not extraordinary like her children and she wasn’t extraordinarily beautiful either, but I had the feeling we had clicked during the few moments we had spent together. I found myself wondering what could have possibly made her ex husband decide to leave such a loving family. That guy had thrown his luck away. And so had I, if truth was to be told. But I preferred not to muse on that.
I should have accepted that hardly anything had happened to me during my stay in Saskatchewan but I couldn’t. I felt it had been something important and, as absurd as it may sound, I knew there was more to come. I had started having my recurrent dream (the one I wrote to you about) where my left eyebrow turned indigo out of a sudden. And I couldn’t find an answer to my dilemma: had Gwen dreamed our encountered that night, too? Was that the reason why she had wanted to meet me? She wanted to quit school and she wanted to move to Portland because she wanted to live with her daddy: she may have thought I could be a means of achieving both her goals. This might have been perfectly reasonable. But why had she acted so rudely the day we had first met then? Why had she changed her attitude all of a sudden? The more I thought about it, the more I convinced myself it couldn’t be because of the dream. But I couldn’t find any other explanation. Maybe I lacked the necessary information.
During the day I often found myself googling indigo children. I read many interesting websites, according to which indigo children were a new generation of incredibly gifted warriors whose task was to guide humankind through these dark times until a new, better era begins. I can’t say I believed what I read, but I found it quite fascinating. One day Natalie, my PhD student, caught me as I was surfing the net for information about indigo children. I knew she had a deep interest in poetry, just like me. And I suspected she secretly wrote poems, just like me. When she saw the website I was reading she asked if I liked their poetry and I replied that I had no idea some of those kids would be able to write poems too. As I was saying this I felt as if a piece of the jigsaw was clicking into place. But I had no time to linger on this odd sensation because I heard a soft knock on the door of my office. A good-looking young man opened the door and asked:
Mr.Eyebrow do you have a minute? My name is David Sourcil. I guess you’ve met my wife and kids.
