​Within the theatre of his many lives Auguste Rodin’s method of teaching piano was to make his pupils wear coachman’s gauntlets. Not always the pair. Should the practice piece be heavy on the beat, worn or not, a gauntlet on the left hand made little difference to any two chord pounding. On the other hand [a pun] the fingers of the right Rodin rarely allowed to wriggle free.
 
Bach’s Italian Concerto arranged for pianoforte was the testing piece that Rodin most often inflicted on his pupils. A dash of affection for his country of temporary residence had him first select this. A sadistic perversity had him persevere. Mostly to deter the mother-sent schoolgirls, black-lashed eyes a’flutter, who were wont to swear their love for the bear. The most persistent even declared themselves undaunted by his growls and bellows.
 
Rodin turned his large back on all such declarations.

“Play! Play!” he’d sing out in his high tenor. And should a gauntlet fumble the counterpoint one of his own huge hands would come thumping down on the piano’s loose lid. The bang and clatter would be accompanied by his oft-used cry and complaint: “Interpret! Interpret! A rock’d make more sense.”

A few months ago, as I was laying in my bed, a big ghost appeared above my head. At first, I noticed his big smile and crystal white teeth. 
“You certainly have a good dentist in Heaven,” I said then. 
“Or are you maybe from Hell?” I asked provocatively .
But he only continued to smile, without a word, and it was a real mystery why he came into my house. 
“Hey, Mister Ghost, what are you doing here, what you want from me?” I started asking again, but unfortunately, it ended without response as the first time. 
He was in the air a few more seconds and after that disappeared in a moment. My main question stayed without an answer. Why did he fly in my room?

The story goes Pa met Ma in the city when he drove a truckload of pigs to market. She was the young waitress who served him cup after cup of coffee and gave him three eggs instead of just two along with four slices of bacon.

​Pa liked Ma as soon as he saw her so he told her he’d go back to the hotel and clean up and come back and take her to a movie if she’d like.

Ma said yes and one thing led to a marriage and Ma moved with Pa down to his farm, a strange place for a city girl who had spent all 18 years of her short life in the city.

Ma had a lot to learn on the farm and she did it slowly. The first time she took laundry out the basement door to hang on the line she met a skunk not bothering anyone, first skunk she had ever seen, and like most skunks no one had ever tried to pet him before.

Ma had already petted some of Pa’s cows and sheep and even a reclining sow with piglets so she put her laundry down to give this pretty critter a nice petting.
 
The skunk, however, had other ideas and raised quite a stink. 

It was hours before Ma could go back in the house because Pa had to wait until dark to clean her up in back of the barn with very strong soap and buckets and buckets of water. 

Eventually most of the stench subsided but Ma’s clothes were a total loss. They couldn’t even be used for rags and had to be burned way out in a field not planted that year.

All through the scrubbing and buckets of water Pa and Ma kept laughing and squealing. Like always, they had a very good time.

Dark blue waves were hitting the beach, while I was sitting on the fine white crystal sand. My eyes were directed toward the open ocean, and I looked the Sun's rays, which were refracting on the blue surface. Together, they had some mixed color between red and blue, but it changed every time when a new wave came. A slight wind was gently touching my skin, and I felt totally connected with the nature around me. As one organism, no one could separate us from each other, and when I think about it again, I am completely sure, it will stay like that forever. 

She could paint worlds with those fingers.

Her canvas a screen, her brush a small, compact keyboard that clicked like the razor-sharp little teeth of a Piranha every other moment; ravenous to consume the notions of creation held inside her; like an artist throwing paint at a wall in furious rapture.

I watch her surreptitiously most of the morning in a Café downtown and wonder how the world doesn’t stop to marvel at it: the delicate precision of those fingers flying over the letters. The silent movement of her lips as she composes a line – no, strike it! Abolished, a wretched thing stripped of its adornments; it has no shelter here on the page, a cast out; a dirty Orphaned passage of little worth – not even a flicker from the world at the bright intrigue of those eyes; pale as a winter’s lake in the first stark light of the day; the amusement that gleams and glitters in them as she works.

It’s a maestro at his opus.

A sculptor carving with precision into marbled stone.

I’m taken into her world by force. Besieged, set upon and plundered, I sink down, down into layers of it. I cannot ignore the tapestries being woven there before me. I can almost hear the clash of swords, smell the sulfurous heat of a dragon belching fire, see the ripple of potent magic undulating and transforming the very fabric of the air around me. There’s no respite to this bombardment; no rest; no recourse but to dive further.

To pass through the bone yards of old, far forgotten tales; wisps of half formed characters; spindly outlines waving like sea grass; pressed into being and then forgot and left to their ruination. To plunge headlong into buried treasures and unearth antiquities of prose never having met the scrutiny of another’s eyes or been feasted and gorged on by a reader’s delight. I pass through endless vestibules of dilapidated landscapes; these poor, dust-covered portraits that once anticipated longevity in the author’s mind but were faded now; their colours dulled; draped with moth-eaten sheets and kept company by nothing more than solitary spiders spinning their webs.

When I rise from this consumption I thrash through to the surface, gasping.

​My head spun full of other lives; other worlds; washing back in to the shores of reality in a froth of cold coffee and that sudden, brutal chill as reality dawns and settles her talons in. And when I meet her eyes eventually, this fickle mistress, she strikes me as the Mona Lisa; an impenetrable force; an enigma devised to inspire tormented dissection in ages to come – but then, what can a reflection know of itself.

​The phone conversation had been in progress a long time. Mr. Throckmorton had called Ralph Peters to see if he had received the information on the $100,000 annuity Ralph had requested. The annuity would provide income for life for Ralph and his wife. They were getting up in years and needed a safety net. His wife had been badgering him about getting one for years. The problem was the information the company sent was incorrect. It provided information for a single-life annuity for Ralph only and not a two-life for Ralph and his wife. His wife was very upset and had been making life miserable for Ralph. She had been a bird-watcher all her life and Ralph thought she sounded like a crow. 
 
“Yours is the third company that has sent me the wrong information on a single-life annuity when I specifically asked for data on a two-life annuity,” Ralph kept saying in different ways over and over and over again.
 
Mr. Throckmorton said the problem could be easily remedied if Ralph would simply give him his wife’s date of birth so the accurate information could be sent.
 
“Mistakes happen, Ralph. We can make everything right.”
 
But Ralph would have none of that. He told Mr. Throckmorton he no longer needed a two-life annuity. He said his wife had died of a heart attack a week ago and she was buried yesterday. It was a nice affair, Ralph said. The ladies at church had prepared a nice buffet that everyone enjoyed after returning from the cemetery. The pickled pig’s feet, a German dish served after many funerals, were just delicious.
 
“I’m so sorry to hear about your wife’s death, Ralph. Is there anything we can do to help?”
 
“Well, not for awhile. I’m kind of fond of the widow next door. If she’ll marry me I might call you back about an annuity for the two of us. But first I have to get her date of birth. She’s a big woman so please don’t make a mistake this time.”
 
“We’ll do our best as always, Ralph,” Mr. Throckmorton said. “We have been providing annuities for more than 100 years and have many satisfied customers. I hope the lady accepts your proposal. If she does, please give me a call and we’ll get that information right out to you. No mistake this time, I promise you."
 
“I’ll do that,” said Ralph. “But I might want an annuity for myself only. This lady doesn’t know anything about annuities. But she’s strong enough to push my wheelchair.”