Come Fall, no song sustains the stoic better than the sound of his rake scratching the back of his resting place: "Rest in peace. Rest in peace."
A real wind blew up. "Anton."
Come Fall, the only song that gets the stoic springing out of his grave is the song of his own name coming up out of the Spring-clean throat of woman.
I stopped raking, looked to the North. Coral was standing where the path to the Red House intersected with the path to The Center.
"Coral, hi." I dropped my rake--dropped her like there were no tomorrows. Making a beeline for the fir Coral stood beside, I said, "Survived Thanksgiving, I see."
"For the most part."
Turned out her Thanksgiving guests had left finally, and though exhausted, she had come to school early--before her shift at the Front Desk--so she could check out the student Christmas sale.
"Belly dancers are performing now," Coral said, her eyes catching a second wind. "Want to check them out?"
I stiff-armed the fir. "I don't know, Coral; I'm in between girlfriends right now and things like belly dancers have a way of throwing wrenches in the way of my better celibacy."
Coral laughed. "You are a monk, aren't you?"
"I don't know," I said, collapsing into the fir, "I do the monk thing for a year or two, then some woman comes along I can't resist and bango--I dive in and lose all the creative powers I'd acquired from my stint at celibacy."
"Olga says that; that her healing powers come from creative energy. Do you think she means sexual energy?"
I stepped away from the fir. "Of course she does. See, sexual energy is creative energy. And instead of using it to make babies, one can store it up and use it to heal--like Olga, or make art like you, or write, like me."
Coral frowned.
Ah, yes, the girl was nineteen, shacked up with a boy full of nineteen himself; hardly storing up much in the way of sexual energy, now, were we?
"You know," I said, just to say something, "I had a girlfriend once who was a healer; thought she could teach me to heal."
"Really?" Coral said. "I don't know if healing is something that can be taught. It's like a gift. Either you have it or you don't."
"No, sexual energy is creative energy. It's just a matter of how one chooses to direct it."
"I see. So did your girlfriend teach you to heal?"
"She tried."
Coral didn't say anything.
"It's kind of hard to describe. See, Rachel would sit me down, have me direct my love . . . I mean, my creative energy--conduct it like electricity; push it into one of her little fingers, pull it out the other, so that through our two bodies there was, like, a complete circuit."
"Wow. And you could do it?"
"Sure. It's no big deal. Any one with any command over their attention can do it--if they're guided through it."
"Really? I want to try. Will you show me?"
I flashed back to ethereal Rachel sitting me down in her dark apartment, tapping my little fingers in the dark.
"Sure," I said, tapping my little fingers behind my back, "I'd love to show you." But then I remembered something I'd said to Trent recently: No, Trent, rest assured, I'll never lay as much as a little finger on your girl.
"Oh," I added, backing up, "but it's important we do the healing exercise somewhere where we won't be disturbed. That tapping-little-finger part; that takes much concentration."
"OK, good. I can't wait. We'll talk more about it. Bye."
Back to raking, I reviewed Rachel's healing exercise--it had been a while. Right off I uncovered a problem. Rachel's entire healing exercise revolved around the student willing love into the teacher. "OK, Coral, now that you've got a handle on the love inside you, you want to eyeball it full steam into me."
Clearly, I had to come up with some new word for love. What I needed was a word with less heart; more head.
The word came to me then: Einstein.
I stopped raking, stared down the intersection where I'd just talked with Coral. "OK, Coral," I said aloud, "now that you got a handle on the speed of light squared inside you, you want to eyeball it full steam into me."
****
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