Enigma

Enigma

( Finding God in a '56 Buick) 

On summers balmy day I lie prone in the cool grass lawn,  gazing at personifications formed by lazy clouds sauntering by as I  contemplate life and purpose. My reverie is interrupted by a muted rumble.  Soft and deep like distanced thunder , but not as from oncoming train.  I sit upright.

Easing under a boulevard canopy of tree leaf mottled sunlight, a dappled deep blue chariot, much too regal to be tagged as “car”, almost silently glides to a halt curbside in front of me.  The only sound I notice interrupting this placid motion is the  muffled scuff of the white sidewall tires coming to a halt against the curb .  Then silence.

This vehicle appears as a sedate 1956 Buick Roadmaster, immaculate and pristine,  dripping in unblemished chrome.  As perfect as I have never seen of an automobile.  It sits serene and huge.  I notice, even though it is midday and the sun bright, there seems to be a veil; no, an aura, around the car, as though enveloping it in timeless space, so like an apparition.  All windows are darkened, and I cannot see anything inside. 

I rise and walk to the verge and pause.  Slowly I approach this ominous arrival, frightened a bit, but compellingly curious.  I look at my own reflection in the opaque windows and press close. 

With a almost imperceptible whine, the rear window recedes downward , releasing a cool, conditioned flush of air from inside ; smelling of Mom and freshly washed sheets, it infuses my nostrils and I am curiously calmed, and yet simultaneously excited.

What has this conference carried to my streetside?  A learned judge?  a celebrity?  Some lost soul ?  Curiosity leaps unbridled as I lean yet closer into this darkened envelopment. 

A singular figure sits in the opulent cushions at rear.  It is dressed in what appears to be a business suit , but all I can see for sure- it is dark and almost blends into upholstery.  A glance to the front reveals no driver; only darkness.  It is all so calm and shaded and mysterious.  

Unable to contain my wonderment, I speak; imploring, “May I help you?”  

Who is this in this most magnificent sedan from a bygone era?

There is no response; not even a turn toward me.

I shudder in goosebumps.  What lies in store?  What does this being want of me, and why me?  What is the purpose?  I am feeling calmer in my angst now as if reassured somehow, as if a peace has shrouded me.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly , the richly dressed figure turns toward me and the face slides from veiled shadow into my gaze.

I am transfixed, astounded and startled to a state of immobile statuary. 

I am looking at myself.  It is my own countenance I see.  How can this be?

Before I can react or rebound to formulate any voice, there comes a smile from this “inside” me.

“No thank you, I’m just looking,” comes across to me in voice; Or perhaps a thought, or even intuition.  I’m unsure.

I am unable to discern if actual words were formed.  But I certainly feel a presence has enveloped me.  Whatever the format, this delivery came with a sense of omniscience, reassurance, of unimaginable power.

Frozen again, I pull back as the window  rises with soft whir and closes with a solid “thud” again closing me off to ponder this moment of revelation.

The Buick slides from the curb.  No thrashing engine. No squeal of springs.  It is as though an ocean liner has just slid into seas journey.  It recedes down the leafy boulevard and, dare I say, its aura becomes opaque .

Shapes and light slides me back to the reality of the now, I am lying on the grass , looking up at clouds.  Did I nod off ?  Was this apparition of a summers nap ?  Was there ever even a car?   I have a brief pervading thought.

Did I just gaze, ever so briefly, into God’s eyes? 

Letter to Ted Cruz after the Senate confirmation vote on Transportation Secretary Pater Buttigieg

Office of Ted Cruz

Washington, DC

 Dear Senator Cruz                                                                                    February 2, 2021

I am in wonder at your energy for constant obstructionism;  no matter the area as long as it has a Democratic tag on it.  Nothing new. 

But, watching Secretary Buttigieg’s live Senate confirmation vote I noted your Nay, which makes you a much more  personal interest to me in the future.

Watching your consistent irritating demeanor as you vote- not your conscience, nor even constituency, but your bull-headed, cow-towing , sycophancy to a man who has called you a “basket case” and “liar” on national television.  Yup, we remember.  He wasn’t counting on you to Make American Great Again.  Neither am I

Oh, we do remember your frequent tirades about the legitimacy of our last national election.  Or a casebook of lots of other issues; but why be picky and petty when now better energy can be spent.

I think now is opportunity for new energy in taking closer look at your official duties.  To ponder any legislation you sponsor.  To take note of your votes and any absenteeism .  Commentary of your commentary.

You know, I know more than a few gay folks,   a number Texas resident voters,  some social media influencer friends ,and even a few others having issues with you.  I think we should start a coalition .  We need for people to know just what a slimy slug representative they have.  On second thought I take that back .  I change my opinion;  just as you are so wont to do with your positions.  So you can forgive me, right?    Who am I to call you a name.?  I apologize for saying that.  

How’s about instead a “nasty , most nasty, lying man” representing Texas in the Senate.  That, Ted is from your dear friend; former President Trump.  It’s on record, Ted.

 So dear Senator Cruz .  (I tried “honorable,” but I choked on it) I think more can be said this next election time.  A lot more.  I think we will easily open a few windows to let your people see what they have doing the job he was voted in to do for them .  I think we can make a case for helping MAGA know they need to dump Ted Cruz.  We had a guy much like you in Chicago once. Edward Robert Vrdolyak. He got nicknamed “Fast Eddie.” Check out his career.  He lied about everything, too.  

I think you need a defining nickname as well.  Let’s float  “Jabba Cruz.” Jabba was an exogorth in Star Wars movies.  An Exogorth is the name for a slug.  Karma, Ted ,it’s all about Karma.  So watch out Senator, as we’ll be watching too.   

Love 

All shades of voters, and me- 

Jerome “One of those” Wendt

Renascence

Renascence
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I'd started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.

Over these things I could not see;
These were the things that bounded me;
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.

But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I'll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
And—sure enough!—I see the top!
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I 'most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.

I screamed, and—lo!—Infinity
Came down and settled over me;
Forced back my scream into my chest,
Bent back my arm upon my breast,
And, pressing of the Undefined
The definition on my mind,
Held up before my eyes a glass
Through which my shrinking sight did pass
Until it seemed I must behold
Immensity made manifold;
Whispered to me a word whose sound
Deafened the air for worlds around,
And brought unmuffled to my ears
The gossiping of friendly spheres,
The creaking of the tented sky,
The ticking of Eternity.

I saw and heard, and knew at last
The How and Why of all things, past,
And present, and forevermore.
The Universe, cleft to the core,
Lay open to my probing sense
That, sick'ning, I would fain pluck thence
But could not,—nay! But needs must suck
At the great wound, and could not pluck
My lips away till I had drawn
All venom out.—Ah, fearful pawn!
For my omniscience paid I toll
In infinite remorse of soul.

All sin was of my sinning, all
Atoning mine, and mine the gall
Of all regret. Mine was the weight
Of every brooded wrong, the hate
That stood behind each envious thrust,
Mine every greed, mine every lust.

And all the while for every grief,
Each suffering, I craved relief
With individual desire,—
Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire
About a thousand people crawl;
Perished with each,—then mourned for all!

A man was starving in Capri;
He moved his eyes and looked at me;
I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew his hunger as my own.
I saw at sea a great fog bank
Between two ships that struck and sank;
A thousand screams the heavens smote;
And every scream tore through my throat.

No hurt I did not feel, no death
That was not mine; mine each last breath
That, crying, met an answering cry
From the compassion that was I.
All suffering mine, and mine its rod;
Mine, pity like the pity of God.

Ah, awful weight! Infinity
Pressed down upon the finite Me!
My anguished spirit, like a bird,
Beating against my lips I heard;
Yet lay the weight so close about
There was no room for it without.
And so beneath the weight lay I
And suffered death, but could not die.

Long had I lain thus, craving death,
When quietly the earth beneath
Gave way, and inch by inch, so great
At last had grown the crushing weight,
Into the earth I sank till I
Full six feet under ground did lie,
And sank no more,—there is no weight
Can follow here, however great.
From off my breast I felt it roll,
And as it went my tortured soul
Burst forth and fled in such a gust
That all about me swirled the dust.

Deep in the earth I rested now;
Cool is its hand upon the brow
And soft its breast beneath the head
Of one who is so gladly dead.
And all at once, and over all
The pitying rain began to fall;
I lay and heard each pattering hoof
Upon my lowly, thatched roof,
And seemed to love the sound far more
Than ever I had done before.
For rain it hath a friendly sound
To one who's six feet underground;
And scarce the friendly voice or face:
A grave is such a quiet place.

The rain, I said, is kind to come
And speak to me in my new home.
I would I were alive again
To kiss the fingers of the rain,
To drink into my eyes the shine
Of every slanting silver line,
To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze
From drenched and dripping apple-trees.
For soon the shower will be done,
And then the broad face of the sun
Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth
Until the world with answering mirth
Shakes joyously, and each round drop
Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top.

How can I bear it; buried here,
While overhead the sky grows clear
And blue again after the storm?
O, multi-colored, multiform,
Beloved beauty over me,
That I shall never, never see
Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold,
That I shall never more behold!
Sleeping your myriad magics through,
Close-sepulchered
O God, I cried, give me new birth,
And put me back upon the earth!
Upset each cloud's gigantic gourd
And let the heavy rain, down-poured
In one big torrent, set me free,
Washing my grave away from me!

I ceased; and through the breathless hush
That answered me, the far-off rush
Of herald wings came whispering
Like music down the vibrant string
Of my ascending prayer, and—crash!
Before the wild wind's whistling lash
The startled storm-clouds reared on high
And plunged in terror down the sky,
And the big rain in one black wave
Fell from the sky and struck my grave.

I know not how such things can be;
I only know there came to me
A fragrance such as never clings
To aught save happy living things;
A sound as of some joyous elf
Singing sweet songs to please himself,
And, through and over everything,
A sense of glad awakening.
The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear,
Whispering to me I could hear;
I felt the rain's cool finger-tips
Brushed tenderly across my lips,
Laid gently on my sealed sight,
And all at once the heavy night
Fell from my eyes and I could see,—
A drenched and dripping apple-tree,
A last long line of silver rain,
A sky grown clear and blue again.
And as I looked a quickening gust
Of wind blew up to me and thrust
Into my face a miracle
Of orchard-breath, and with the smell,—
I know not how such things can be!—
I breathed my soul back into me.

Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I
And hailed the earth with such a cry
As is not heard save from a man
Who has been dead, and lives again.
About the trees my arms I wound;

Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;
I raised my quivering arms on high;
I laughed and laughed into the sky,
Till at my throat a strangling sob
Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb
Sent instant tears into my eyes;
O God, I cried, no dark disguise
Can e'er hereafter hide from me
Thy radiant identity!

Thou canst not move across the grass
But my quick eyes will see Thee pass,
Nor speak, however silently,
But my hushed voice will answer Thee.
I know the path that tells Thy way
Through the cool eve of every day;
God, I can push the grass apart
And lay my finger on Thy heart!

The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,—
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat—the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.
away from you!

An Incidence of Curlers

You never notice it, but when spring water streams bustling rapidly over smooth granite  rock beds, it takes along tiny grains.

Particles for what-  memories? 

Totems of consequence like creation,
a path of breadcrumbs, or

marking passage of  journey downstream ? 

Maybe a timestamp in the continuum of evolution?  

❦
There was  discernment, at that particular time, that certain women were judged deficient as ladies,

when publicly appearing at grocery stores with their hair done up in curlers . 

Enter Aunt Britta , like the rushing stream, keeping her hands bustling
over the grocery tomato bin, 

almost like anointing healing blessings upon each of the reposing fruits- 

finding this one too ripe, that one too green,  and practically none as nice as last years . 

All this for sole benefit of only one other woman fronting the bin-

a flotsam waif  presenting in a faded house dress , and without applied cosmetic face. 

She watches Britta like a rock in the stream. 

Intently. 

The woman,  

(seemingly)  unnoticed by Britta, 

perhaps being of such small account to her, if even any at all in any plan of things;

or on second thought ,more, perhaps, because of her hair done up in curlers,

moves on, casually taking  but one smallish tomato- 


While Britta, no longer with her disdained unworthy audience, 

also quickly picks up a tomato in afterthought,

and coddles it with her as she drifts away downstream with other tasks.
❦

The tomato display appears as if exactly the same as before,
but of, course, it has changed,

evolved,

the incidence of hair curlers causing change to the lie of things thereafter, 

forever. 


Could the ripple of this mote become a monument  downstream? 

We can note that curlers rarely appear at Grocery stores these days,

and all agree tomatoes don’t taste nearly as good now. 

                                    -Jerry Wendt 2020

It Wasn’t Me He Wanted

It Wasn’t Me He Wanted"

"He was over 70. I was 22. We both loved Fran Lebowitz. What was I doing on the back of his motorcycle?"

New York Times "Modern Love"  By Brian Burns 12/13/19

Running my hands down my jeans as I waited for a drink, I thought, “Can a 22-year-old even be underdressed?” In my corduroy blazer and dark-washed jeans, I was the youngest person in this Boston theater by a generation, the seemingly lone millennial delegate for an evening meet-and-greet with Fran Lebowitz before her onstage conversation. This V.I.P. access came at a higher cost, but I figured if I nixed buying almonds for a few months I could balance my budget.

I’d come alone, not having any friends who were eager to drop $100 to see Fran wax acerbic on secondhand smoke and Rudy Giuliani. But being alone was preferable. If I’d brought a friend, I might have felt forced to talk with someone I already knew instead of eavesdropping on all these people I didn’t.

Settling into a seat with my $17 glass of pinot noir, I overheard a woman say, “How funny you bring up Maria Sharapova. We watched a months-old Charlie Rose with her last night. So self-serious.” It all felt impossibly mature, with my fellow attendees seeming so intellectual and arty with their drinks cradled atop world weary wrists. I had never felt older. And I had never felt younger

I heard a man say, “Such a nice evening.”

I had to look over my shoulder to make sure he was talking to me. He was white-haired and pachyderm-eared, his shirt snug against a Dionysian  belly. I figured he was on his way to one of the other empty seats and that his observation was merely a means of entering a space I alone was occupying.

“Oh, totally,” I said. “I’m excited for her to get here. I envision her Bea Arthur tall. You know? Imposing. Have you seen her before?”

I’m Ted,” he said.

Standing up, I said, “Brian. It’s my first time at this theater. My first time stepping foot in Watertown, embarrassingly enough.”

“Oh, hon — you are young.”

He was staring at me with a searching gaze that was perhaps explained by his rainbow-patterned bow tie. Before I could relish chatting with a fellow member of my tribe many decades older, Fran walked in.

“More Estelle Getty, it seems,” Ted said, flashing a shattered piano keys grin.

I’ve always had a big capacity for adoration, maybe something to do with being the youngest sibling and worshiping my older sisters from outside their bedroom doors as they got ready for parties and proms. 

But Ted wasn’t making any effort to grab her at the elbow with the same “Fran, this longstanding donor is just thrilled to meet you” verve I was witnessing elsewhere. All eyes were on Ms. Lebowitz, but Ted’s were on me.

“What do you do for work?” he said.

“Well, I graduated last spring,” I said. “English major. I work at a hotel. And I dog walk. But hoping to write again. That’s my background. I guess.”

Nodding, he said, “I’m a member here. I get two seats to every show. And it’s just me now so I’m always looking for someone to join. Someone as adorable as you, if I’m lucky.”

“Oh,” I said.

“You should join me Thursday,” he said, reaching into his breast pocket and taking out a pen, which was inscribed in gold with his name, email and phone number.

“Quite the business card,” I said.

“These aren’t for business. Just pleasure.”

I had already tried excusing myself to the bar, hoping he’d take the hint I wasn’t in the market for my own J. Howard Marshall. He followed me and paid for my drink. Crossing my arms and darting my eyes, I tried to convey disinterest.

Instead I listened, politely, as he began to tell me about his partner of 33-and-a-half years.
After he described his husband’s final day, terminally ill and surrounded by their four poodles, I said, “That’s so special. That’s — honestly, that’s love.”

“It would have been nice to speak with Fran tonight,” Ted said, perhaps seeing in my eyes that she had left the room. “But it was even nicer talking to you.”

I should have been angry that my meet-and-greet ended up being with a retired software engineer. But I couldn’t blame him. Not immediately, at least. Because pulling out our respective tickets, we found our seats to be A12 and A13.
Settling into our neighboring spots, I told Ted that I was excited.

He squeezed my thigh and said, “How excited?”

For two hours, Fran rained on parades. Our president, our pop culture, our luxury condominiums. Her wit was as much a scalpel as ever. The proceedings were eventually turned over to an audience Q. and A., and although I had arrived intending to ask if she was talkative with cabdrivers, I didn’t raise my hand. 

Watching Fran loathe from the front row should have been the latest instance of my penchant for adoration. But as Ted tapped his leg beside mine, I couldn’t access that usual thrill of watching someone be so assuredly themselves.
As the house lights went up, I swallowed my disappointment.

“Ever ride on a motorcycle?” Ted said.

Suddenly picturing him on a Harley, I tried to deny his offer of a ride home: “This jacket is more midseason than winter. And I run cold. I’d freeze. I never even learned how to ride a bike. Like a bicycle bike. And I’m so tall. Plus, I have this whole thing with noise. But thank you, really.”

Minutes later, I swung my leg over the back of Ted’s motorcycle. He had equipped me with a windbreaker, gloves and the assurance I could hold onto him anywhere but his arms and face.

After giving him directions to an address that was close to where I actually lived, I braced his midriff and prayed. It was a clear night, and watching Boston’s skyline emerge as we drove down Commonwealth Avenue felt big and cinematic, as if it were playing out in a life that wasn’t mine.

Above the wind, Ted said, “I doubt it’s still open but there was this bar around here.”

Before I could say no to what I thought was the suggestion of another drink, he said, “My old company hosted its holiday party at this place I’m thinking of. And there was this man, this beautiful, beautiful boy, a colleague of mine, just about as old as me, who I always — I always presumed. And we were all there and it was fun but, eventually, with some liquid courage, I pulled him aside and asked if he’d like to take a ride on my motorcycle.”

We stopped at a light. Harry’s Bar was on my right, the market where I buy my cigarettes on the left. A familiar stretch of the city I’ve called home suddenly belonging to someone else.

“I took him back home to my apartment,” Ted said. “And I shared my first kiss, my first anything, with a man that night. And my entire life just exploded. This was way before your time and it was all so different. It was the first time I ever realized I could live my life that way, that it was even an option. Thirty-three-and-a-half years. And I saw him to the end.”

Ted pulled his bike over to the curb and cut the engine. We had arrived at the address I’d said was mine. More than at any other point of the night, I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to apologize for having not listened to him more intently, more heartfully. Yet I also felt guilty for possibly leading him on, for listening to him at all.

As he unstrapped my helmet, I told him how sweet a gesture it had been, driving me home. How appreciative I was. And how lucky his husband had been, even though “lucky” didn’t feel like the right word. It was all so clumsy, but Ted didn’t address it as he silently pulled me toward him, his face slack with disbelief.

I didn’t push away. He might have just shared his motorcycle with a man 50 years his junior, but I knew from the wonder in his eyes that it wasn’t me he was seeing. It wasn’t me he wanted to bring to the symphony and take to his Cape house and share that second ticket to life with. And as Ted kissed me on the cheek before I turned my head and let him kiss me on the lips, I think I felt old enough to understand that.

writer Brian Burns 

Let's Do The Time Warp Again

Anthony Brooke woke up feeling a bit groggy and disoriented.  His surroundings were not strange, but they were totally unfamiliar to him.   Something was not right .He was in bed in a small bedroom with vintage furniture (that looked brand new) .  He was still dressed as he was in his last memory of driving his Kia through Kansas to get to Wichita for a appointment the next morning.  He recalled his car suddenly failing , the engine stalling, and the lights going dark.  He looked out at the dark starry sky on this lonely road wondering how he was going to get help out in such an isolated area, and then, suddenly, he woke up to a sunny day in this house.  It was quiet.  Getting up, he looked out the window, seeing a small town in the desert. No trees.  No sounds.  He looked next door into the neighbors window.  There were people sitting at a dinette set up for a meal.  But they did not move.  The kitchen looked like something out of 1950, all turquoise and chrome.  It was like a tableau in a old Department store window.  Tony went to his kitchen.  The cabinets were all full of food , unopened.  He opened the fridge.  No light came on.  No power.  Empty.  Light switches also nonfunctional.  Walking out the front door to outside , he was puzzled finding more of the same- brand new cars just sitting idle.   People , no, mannequins of people,  standing immobile. 

Tony took out his I-Phone, having just enough  time to see there was no signal, when he heard a piercing siren coming from a tower in the center of the village.  Soon came a blinding light, horrific wind, and then... nothing.

Now, there are three things I need to relate at this juncture.  One- on May 5th 1955, 65 miles outside of Las Vegas, Nevada, a  top secret project named “Apple-2" detonated an atomic bomb from atop a tower centered in  a specially constructed model town built to evaluate the effects of an atomic explosion on a typical American community.  There is no record of anyone inadvertently left behind at the site that day, but, of course, if someone had been there, they would have been incinerated instantly .

    Two- May 4th, the evening before the blast,  there were numerous reports from pilots over Nevada, and many calls from concerned Las Vegas residents, of heightened UFO activity observed.  Accounts were dutifully recorded and filed away “Top Secret” by the military.  They remain secret to this day.

Third, and perhaps most pertinent to my story here; the question,  “How am I able to tell you all about this today? “

I know you probably have more questions , but I’m late for my ride home right now.

                                                       Perhaps... another time?  

                                   

The Gift Message

The trouble with a lot of comparisons to physical objects are too simplistic . Even the nametags are misleading like "wormhole"  or "event horizon"  It takes a physicist or Unified field theorist to get a handle and even then, not.

Some of the forward thinkers even are extrapolating metaphysics into equations . Think sort of modified Chaos Theory.

I had an experience that made me open my mind. A couple years ago my upscale Santa Cruz pals gave me a birthday present of an "alignment" with their message therapist. I am thinking "quack"  and even more, but so as not to offend them (well her anyway) I enter this place which is all new age music, bamboo plants,chimes,and dripping water . Oh, and colored lights. A grand venue for an acid trip on another occasion..  O.K, I'm in and they have me up on this table that I fear falling off from, it's so narrow. "Whew, clothes all remain on" 

I look around. About 5 other tables occupied with masseuse women in sarongs or such talking to clients as they work them with hands. I have been contracted to appointment with "major domo" or "swami," but who in touch with his modernity, likes to be called  just "Bill"  I find out he is a licensed therapist that I silently educe to myself that , in California, means he is a Sierra Club member and gives money to "Save the Whales," Oh, and he wears Birkenstocks and a "Renaissance Faire blouson shirt," But since the shirt is so loose I can see his is very muscular and has a hairy chest.  He is very good looking. He also has a voice like James Earl Jones drenched in thick molasses, hearing his telling me he is finishing another client and he will be right back with me.  Things


are looking up. Was Mary too cheap to spring for a naked message, I wonder?   

So I lie on my rickety table and let my gaze fall upon a lady on the next table and under his spell. She has jeans that are two sizes too small making me more comfortable that I will be O.K. on this table holding up for awhile.  Bill is running his fingers down her back and precipitously close to her ass crack. She lets out a little whimper every time his fingers reach their lowest travel. Oh, Hell- as he presses on, she's now moaning.  I'm now apprehensive. He finished "stuffed pants lady" to her effusive praise and gets a warm (too much so?) hug from Bill.  I smell patchouli. 

He comes to me. I ask just what this will entail and he relates that he will align my spirit energies and ascertain "blocked  points."  Will this be a "deep tissue message?"

"No, first I  will feel your energy flow and then note the nexus. "  

He begins running his hands over (not touching)  my back .  I feel no disruption to my "energy flow"   It's like Reiki but I don't ask cause I don't want to seem ignorant.

Bill asks " Is this O.K. with you so far?"

As long as you don't touch my ass crack, I'm all good."  

"I sense your resistance to this . Are you a skeptic"

"Oh, yes." 

"That's O.K... It would make it a better experience for you if you could relax."

"I'm sorry I just see no science in this, it's all a baseless tribal ceremony for money in my book. I don't want to offend you as disrespectful but I disbelieve, and am feeling nothing from this, other than discomfort"

"I understand , as your first session I am really doing what would be a metaphysical determination as a basis for future therapy. We'll do this at your comfort level. O.K.?"

At this point with "metaphysical" entering  the talk, a dialogue begins. He tells me he is working with Stanford University physicists in experiments on the relation of metaphysical to physical .Holy shit.  Now I'm interested and explore what he is saying. He uses a example of having a MRI. The pounding generates magnetic waves , at first of such electrical intensity, that they vibrate the whole body - tissue, and bone. The actually align the flow in a directional linear filed much as a laser makes coherent light.  Geez, Bill isn't at all a nitwit.   When the body is aligned in charge, the MRI machine bombards with different varying vibrations that disrupt the electrical charge alignments and creates a distortion that can be displayed as an X ray can.These varying frequencies actually create an image that can be read by trained professionals.

He goes on that these measurable magnetic resonances can be extended to "see" physical operations, and his work is in that area determining if "affliction" can be visualized by disruptions in the body's magnetic fields.  The University theorists are working to determine if this is phenomena that can be measured.  He uses the example of how animals can "sense"  a carcinoma , a blood disease, or other event. This is where the metaphysical side enters in.

In the end I see a gimmer of light that is cutting edge for now, but no longer to me a silly dalliance of  the wealthy .While I would not go back fir more, I had to admit this sent me to thinking. I don't think, however that I got a $450 revelation out of it . Now perhaps, if there was a naked option on this therapist , I'd be all in .  Seriously it made me realize I need to keep an open mind about the unknown and there may, (correction; "can") be connections and causality beyond conventional thinking.  

So I am more open to certain people touching my ass crack at the very least !

Is this 500 words?