Another Madeleine

Have you ever felt a sequence, in which you are that particular number, that completes it?

Or a series of words uttered in a movie you watched this morning, then heard again at work, and yet again somewhere in public–the same exact words?

The way your wife stared at you before you left the house. A child gazed upon your face with same eyes out in the street. A dog, as it walked by, with those eyes, again.

The smell of flowers and cookies, maybe old incense, discontinued candy, cheap soda as it first cracks loud and cold spraying from the can.

The Proust madeleine on your table again. Tea conjuring the salty scent your grandmother brought with all her old dresses. Sipping carefully recalling the patterns in her polyester.

Odor of Gun powder.

Of clean fresh laundry warm and wonderful.

Skunk on your walking trail.

Rotting corpse baking on highway asphalt under a Texas sun.

Essence of life with its bouquet of birth, warm menstrual blood while you’re fucking away and sweat starts to sting your right eye, girl’s fruity lip gloss in the Gross grade, a perfumed letter you’ve been telling yourself to throw away for years, oil change on your first motorcycle, the new dish you prepare while she sits patiently waiting with a smile.

I don’t think you’re paranoid.

Some of these instances alone, mean nothing. But when they happen consecutively, as if people and things were strategically placed for your benefit upon arrival, you may want to have a seat and smell the skunk in the air. No, don’t reach for your phone–relax, and consider these signs. Why do they resonate with you? Why does it all seem so…rigged?

I simply think it’s endless code we have unconsciously written and the program that is us, acts on our behalf to deliver messages of: “This smells familiar; That feeling behind a living thing’s eyes is of genuine warmth–and I need more of that; Those words, they stand out to me, and there is a message there for me; The connection I feel with this person, maybe due to their attributes and I am attracted to them on some profound level; I keep hearing this phrase or seeing that thing over and over and my psyche want to enlightens me with these images, these smells.”

I use to say, “It’s a sign. That’s why I ended up here. Or, “It’s fate.”

And, “Somebody doesn’t want me to have that. Somebody somewhere is stopping me. The powers that be are against me.”

I also used to say, “Santa knows i’ve been a good kid this year.”
The array of every day events was once a powerful sweep, a shuddering from the shifting a strong wave, and then a tossing in the tempest, to and fro. Like a leaf in the wind.
Ever had a dream where you wake up and then wake again?Would you ever know you were dreaming if you had never woken up? Of course, being truly awake trumps the dream-like state, and on some level, without dispute, we know that.

I was once in a sinking stupor, with thoughts of “signs” and “supernatural connections”…until I finally honed in on the puppets and no longer their shadows. Initially, realizing I had been born in a dark cave, and was quickly growing old there, was terrifying. But the thought of dying there was devastating. I knew I had to crawl out, scream, postfuckinghaste.

 

 

Now, I sit before you arranging letters to form words, and words to create sentences. I am the designer of this sequence, the captain of the ship avoiding the storm ahead, the host inviting you to tea, the madman relishing in his self-aware paranoia…

 

Come, sit… madeleine?

∞