The Ghosts of Old BF Past

In my professional life, I cut a lot of tissues into thin sections suitable for microscopic evaluation.  These bad boys get stained a kaleidoscope of colors, hot pink, purple, bright blue and red.  Sometimes they are even fluorescent green.  It really is quite beautiful in a Jackson Pollack kinda way.

So last night, I have this crazy dream in which I am sitting in an Adirondack chair in front of a farmhouse.  All of my ex-boyfriends, or anyone I ever even dated for that matter, are queued up waiting to talk to me.  Trust me, as a 51 year old person who has been single her entire life, that line is a loooooong one.  One by one, they are each coming up to me, kissing me on the forehead, apologizing and then each is handing me something.  I don't look at what these are until later.  In that moment, there is deep connection with each of them, there is remembering the best and sweetest thing about each, and there is forgiveness from both sides for any slight, real or imagined.  The interaction with some is very short, with others it is quite extended.  It's not proportional to how long we dated, or anything else that I can determine.  Each is simply as long as it needs to be.  No one gets pissy for having to wait.  No one starts a fight with anyone else.

There is Michael, my college flame.  Someone who made me look at life in a quirky way that has persisted, someone who made me love foreign films.  There is Mike, the Marine, who threw me over his shoulder one night and carried me up two flights of stairs in a way that made me feel all Scarlett O'Hara.  Oh my!  There is my sweet Ben, my star-crossed lover boy, the one who came to me when I needed him most and then slipped away.  There are Bob and Homer.  There is Steve aka the date rapist.  There is my magic man Frank who blew the lid off of Pandora's box of my heart in the best of ways.  There is Kieran.  There are James, John, Peter, and Paul (perhaps more of the apostles if I cared to look harder, which I do not).  They are translucent white, earth red, blue black and beautiful caramel brown of skin.  I loved each of them in different ways and to different depths and for different durations.

After the last person walked away and disappeared from view down the dirt drive, I finally looked down at my hands and saw that each has handed me something like a microscope slide.  One of my peeps came over, took the lot of them, and started sliding them into a curved metal frame of sorts.  As she continued, I realized it looks rather like a zoetrope where each slide formed part of a complex Tiffany-on-steroids pattern.  She gestured for me to follow her into a dark, cool, dry place.  My brain says cave, but it was more like the Cerebro device used by Dr.  X.  She got the device installed high above me and activated it so that light poured through these little slices of glass they had given me.

If you have ever visited a cathedral when the color of the windows traveled the beams of light and stood in that glowing bath of color, you may understand this part. If you haven't ever done this, go do it. It is all together magical.  I recommend the parquet floor beneath the Chagall windows at the Chicago Art Institute. 

I lie on the floor under whatever this is as it begins to turn slowly and the colors spark and simmer all around me.   The colors that shine through these slides are palpable in a way that color isn't here.  The purple is a deep dark amethyst that transmits luxe and elegance.  It is smooth to the touch and rich tasting in my mouth like dark chocolate.  It smells of things I don't have words to describe.  The golden new gamboge yellow is rich and tangy tasting, warm to the touch on my skin as it skates across it.  It induces joy.  My beloved blues, the deepest sapphire hue reminiscent of those Chagall windows, bring with it deep stillness.  Cool relief like ice in August.  It tastes spritely.  I lay there a long time engulfed in the experience of the swirling colors moving slowly over me.

And when I wake up, all I have is gratitude for the gift each of those people gave me.  I understand that each person, each experience was part of this lovely, lovely whole. 

Chagall Windows