Deixis

DEIXIS

  Emile Raymond

  Copyright 2005 by Emile Raymond

  In linguistics "deixis" refers to the necessity of context for understanding the reference of certain words and phrases. That is to say, unless one knows who's saying "I," or who's being referred to with "you," or where's being referred to with "there" or "here," none of those words have any real meaning. In that sense one has to have been there to really understand what was going on.

  For me Deixis is the name of the source of my first very broken heart, including all the years of psychological trauma that would ensue, and all the dreams of a lost love that would fill occasional nights over the years.

  Following my first wife's departure twenty years after Deixis, and during the suffering (misery, sorrow, agony) of recovery, when my heart was more sensitive than at any other time in my life, I would reflect upon certain failures of mine over the years to have given love, specific events that I wished I could repeat. One was when my sweet wife called me from the airport in Frankfurt to announce her imminent arrival and her love for me, at the exact moment I was trapped in a job related crisis. I was angry with her for calling "for no reason" when I was at work, but more so in this case because a VIP had flown in from another city in his own plane to see my boss, who at the time was out of the office. The mistake was my colleagues', but as usual, it became my problem to solve.

  The other was a certain day twenty or so years before when in a rare moment of unguardedness Deixis ran up to me after class and jumped into my arms. Because I was stupid at the time, and prone to awkward self consciousness, my reaction was contrary to what her rare moment had assumed, and she slid out of my arms dejected.

  I remember those two events as examples of many times I failed to love, and while recovering from my wife's departure, and while healing sadness by developing greater love within myself, I found Deixis online and sent her an email, re-introducing myself. My purpose of writing was very simple. I told her that I wanted only to say what I failed to say during all the years we had courted, and what I realized after saying goodbye to my own wife many years later, was the only thing I ever really wanted to say: "I loved you very much then, and I love you very much now."

  She replied, and we enjoyed a remarkable year of correspondence and healing. I am proud of myself for having taken that step, for having risked opening an old wound, for having done the insane - including a few visits to her and her lovely family - and for having healed an era for both of us.

  Other than the numerous emails we exchanged, I wrote the following few thoughts. At the time I was working alongside an aspiring global leader, and privy to all the accouterments of the billionaire's lifestyle, most of which I am now sometimes ashamed.

  Much of what I wrote here was inspired by a dream I had one night, where Deixis and I were sitting at a formal dinner in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum.

  DEIXIS

  1

  brief dream

  Do you have a black, crewneck, short-sleeved blouse – more T-shirt than blouse but blouse enough to have been appropriately worn in the small restaurant across from the Hotel Belvedere?

  (It was a formal dinner)

  Would you have been wearing it in January?

  Do you have a necklace of pearls?

  Because this is what I saw sitting across from me last night, for just a few seconds if more than one. Not long enough to have reached out, to have tasted the fabric, to have asked about the night, “is this for real?”

  You were just placing the napkin on your lap, and smiling, having only seconds before settled into a seat carefully pushed forward by someone whose hands, I surmised by your smile, were as gentle as the lace drifting over the table’s edge.

  That we were in the Swiss mountains, that we were in the Davos of my labors, that I would never place you there in the daylight, doesn’t concern me. Only that across from me you were smiling in the same room, in the same city, in the same country as I.

  Your lips never parted. I never saw your teeth. I only saw contentment breathed into your face.

  2

  primary color

  If there were a color ‘Deixis’ I would paint my house with it. Entering my door each time would be entering you.

  3

  peace-easy

  I wonder how good a Buddhist I would be were I poor and unable to afford an oasis villa in the desert, a swimming pool beside it, a kitchen full of organic food, art from Tibet and Thailand - to sit anywhere in a private jet designed to hold only fourteen very wealthy people, but with never more than four on board.

  I have been to eleven countries in six months.

  Leather seats and hardwood décor render philosophizing easy, a hostess whose hips swing easily between the high back seats, a television per person, a monthly paycheck half the value of a brand new Honda - why, life is easy.

  Indeed.

  On the other hand, that my wife of twelve years announced one day last year that it was time to move on, that she had had a wonderful affair while studying in Arizona with a young man in the house I paid rent for, upon the hardwood and organic cotton bed I purchased, in the new car I would eventually ship to the other side of the world - this was a good a time as any to test my meditative skills. That she brought her gifts of infidelity along with her, exercised it with two kind gentlemen while I was traveling on business, one of which would eventually deposit the seed within her (and that I would pay dearly to have removed) - these were good challenges to my humble constitution.

  The first illusion I would of necessity overcome was the illusion of victim;

  The second illusion was the illusion of innocence;

  The third, the illusion of possession;

  The fourth, the illusion of permanence;

  The fifth, the illusion of security;

  The sixth, the illusion of pain;

  The seventh, the illusion of self.

  4

  simple

  We love our pain more than we love our peace,

  otherwise we’d have it.

  5

  firsts

  This is the first time I remember feeling lonely in a long time

  the last time I felt this way was when driving from Kathmandu to Lhasa,

  where at the base of her earthly origins

  the mother all goddesses

  I was found desperately seeking for air.

  There is a difference between loneliness and solitude,

  a difference between where I was before you,

  and where I am now.

  In loneliness one seeks a description,

  In solitude one is the description.

  6

  credentials

  My relativism has always been a necessity,

  Good and bad mere linguistic applications,

  Like up and down,

  Rich and poor,

  Successful and not.

  These cages of meaning,

  “Choose your own cell,” I recall once saying,

  are the source of all evil,

  though pain, because I am yet a novice,

  resists my efforts to transcend.

  I’ve never had an agenda,

  Three words about myself,

  To earn a position,

  A monthly figure in mind.

  I am many people,

  None of who has ever won anything,

  Or cares there are no records to prove it.

  7

  brief dream continued

  I don’t actually like Davos. I like the flat we rent at the foot of the mountain. I like selecting my own vegan food at the Coop and preparing it to my tastes - I like the view through the large window, and the warm baseboard beneath my naked feet. I like watching the skiers and snowboarders careening downward.<
br />
  I get up at five every morning just to meditate.

  Everything is white.

  Fuzzily misted over and motionless.

  But I don’t belong there. Did you belong there last night? Was it really a contended smile I saw breathed across your face? How could I, who have never confessed to enjoy those few long-winded days of hectic marketplace, enjoy creating you there, in that restaurant where I kept three men waiting one day for almost four hours?

  Should I not wish we were together elsewhere? Should I not have created you across from me in a boat skipping over the Thailand Sea?

  In the eco-friendly hotel in Katmandu?

  The St. Regis in Rome?

  The Four Seasons in Amman?

  The Sumitomo Corporate tower overlooking Tokyo’s regal skyline?

  Kuala Lumpur’s musical central market?

  Queen Sofia Museum in Madrid, where I tripped away from Galatea of the Spheres beside myself?

  (The guards thought I was drunk)

  Where, should I be able to create you in my closed eyes, create you?

  Under the stars, between the stone walls, along the Thames?

  Lhasa. I would create you sitting across from me in a plastic chair on one of those wobbly Chinese tables perched on top of that unbalanced hotel, watching pilgrims churning hopeful circles below us. Occasionally the white and red of Potala Palace would invoke summer evenings long ago, when the only mantras heard were spoken in Tibetan. No loudspeakers. No wires.

  This is the valley in which I would create you, the mountains I would surround you with. In the morning we would awaken side by side, your hair erupting over the faded pillowcase into my ecstatic fingers.

  8

  Resolution

  In reaching out to you I have been thrust open,

  spilled outward,

  paws patter through me, fading as they track outward,

  I am mopped up and rung out,

  squeezed,

  compressed between silence and heat,

  dispersed into sunlight,

  illuminating dust,

  dancing before an open window.

  I am found

  Has anybody sought me?

  9

  voiced uvular glottal?

  Sometimes I’m sure I can hear your voice clearly,

  in the timbre of a second it appears,

  in the pool of my watery hearing splashes,

  rich with that hollow echo in which I once listened frantically for my own return,

  a vocalic passage sounded from between rounded lips,

  fluid, and cunning, gliding between the cracks of my certainty and prying me open -

  I always seem to hear it when you are giggling.

  10

  unbalanced

  In Riyadh, the sun rages three-hundred-and-sixty-three days a year,

  on the other two I mourn,

  on the remaining quarter I twirl.

  11

  between

  I laugh at myself crying,

  cry at myself laughing,

  twice together they two times dishevel me,

  making a mess of either I’m unshaven and crude,

  a yawning wound sleeping itself closed,

  bewitched, begotten, between.

  12

  a fair deal

  In you, have I exchanged solitude for loneliness,

  peace, for a searching,

  silence for a dusty gale.

  13

  a geography of love

  READ: Thailand, Saudi, Tibet, Dead Sea, Okavango, Sky, Riboneng

  entangled in jungle black hair,

  I laugh wildly (with you)

  flayed by light and heat,

  I scream madly (at you)

  clutching for breathable air,

  I see forever (though you)

  fearless of what’s beneath me,

  I float unguarded (over you)

  scanning the horizon desperately,

  I seek escape (from you)

  dizzy with acceleration,

  I fall rapidly (into you)

  dripping with sweat,

  I am lost (inside you)

  14

  for her most kind husband

  I climb into your arms at night,

  furry and soft,

  I seek your hand during the day,

  smooth and uncalloused.

 

  15

  my dad’s house/my mind

  a garage, a house, a foyer, a kitchen - all spaces full of junk

  old,

  wires and dust

  plastic panels from before convention described us

  sick,

  ancient dials, knobs lying dormant

  needless frozen in time

  stagnant,

  cables, cords and hoses

  a tray of rusted bolts

  black,

  emaciated tires

  a path to nowhere

  help,

  I can't breathe.

  16

  surviving

  surviving this, is waking after my own death,

  opening my eyes on the other side and being in the same place,

  no longer me and yet me,

  breathing you in,

  you out.

  this surviving, is what I do best,

  opening my eyes each morning and being in a new place,

  still me and yet not me,

  breathing you in,

  you out.

  17

  distance

  where do I go from here, deixis?

  every beginning spawns a million more,

  each path leads to a thousand forks,

  a thousand forks to a trillion possibilities,

  each spooning bits of me away

  forever cresting the horizon

  into larger and larger vistas

  more tenuous connections

  no understanding

  no instinct

  emptiness/fullness

  where do I go from here, deixis?

  really, where do I go from here?

  18

  what did I know

  so different from the person I thought you were

  who did I think you were?

  the certified original?

  VIN A123456789Z

  a rare first edition

  a signed copy

  a brain disembodied

  Ivy’d up for dinner

  announced and introduced

  toasted.

  “the line starts here”

  “please have your tickets ready”

  “seat number 7”

  an argument spawning another

  pieced up and cascading

  unintelligibly

  brought from behind

  torn from the top

  approached with caution

  it seems I was sorely mistaken - I never knew you

  or was (is) it me I didn’t (don’t) know

  19

  a brief dream continued…again

  There’s something painfully sluggish about a formal dinner

  Complicated, all these implements

  Why even bother when,

  I have five perfectly good forks on each hand

  Two palms for spoons

  Two rows of knives in my mouth, one above

  One below

  “Grab me a handful of those potatoes, eh?”

  So what’s the point in all the fuss

  The glass and lace

  The plates piled three high

  All these Indians and Bangladeshi’s scurrying around, dancing

  Waiting for the right time to

  take my empty plate

  “are you finished, sir?”

  “no, thank you”,

  “are you finished, sir?”

  “no, thank you”

  “are you finished, sir?”

  “who is this fucking sir you are referring to?”

  “How should I address you
?” she asked, bowing with both hands held palms together in front of her chest.”

  “I am lord god of the universe. I need yet one more fork, please, and one more spoon, please - and see that cucumber, take a half a day to make it look edible.”

  So, then, given all the fuss, what were we doing there in that silly restaurant across from the hotel Belvedere (just the name stirs up nausea)?

  You see, given the potential for all objects to eventually come to rest as a consequence of friction and all, mass being a consideration as well on account of the relationship between mass and friction, as well, for the third time.

  “are you avoiding something, sir?”

  “no, I’m just waiting for my cucumber.”

  “I AM THE LORD GOD OF THE UNIVERSE,” he said, sitting on the other side of the table. The badge hanging around his neck was proof of his deity.

  She, of course, wasn’t wearing a badge. Only a string of pearls but a beautiful string of pearls around a beautiful neck, the same neck I mourned today, sitting at my desk and pretending it wasn’t the greatest human ache to have been purged and lifted into the throat since Beethoven plucked that first of a series of four notes from the bottom of the loneliest orbit in the coldest part of the universe.

  Help / me / oh / please

  20

  the two of me

  have you felt at any time there were two of me writing you

  one resorts to tactics