The Requirement of Wrinkles
That should have been the end of things for us. The evening at Cipriani’s had no business being the moment when I felt cemented to Erica. But I had waited too long. I knew it then, and I know it now, as I piece together this chronology.
Let me be clear. As far as the notion of actually healing someone was concerned, I was not enchanted. I certainly wasn’t convinced. I wasn’t even interested. In fact, I was developing contempt for the entire notion of healing, of mysticism, of alternative approaches. And the development of this contempt was a direct result of the time I spent with Erica, because, frankly, before Erica, I never really paid attention to the realm of mysticism. I was agnostic about the entire field. If I paid any attention at all, it was because PBS or NPR would occasionally run a story about some wrinkled soul with healing powers hibernating in some far-flung locale, and desperately sick people would trek for thousands of miles to bathe themselves in the aura of this enigmatic presence to find that their ailments, which had resisted all previous medical interventions, were cured at last.
I would watch such shows, and while I wouldn’t accept the notion of supernatural ability, neither would I be contemptuous. I saw these stories more as cultural exposés, as much about the odd life of a healer whose sincerity could not be doubted as it was about the desperate straits of conventional types that I could more easily recognize. There was an intriguing tension between the two types, and the story itself about how the arcs of their lives intersected was fascinating. Add to that just a dash of the breathless possibility of legitimacy, and you had a story that could comfortably linger in your mind.
But the roles had to be defined. The healer, first of all, had to be wrinkled. Not sure where this was written, but there you have it. Wrinkled and reclusive and laconic. Also, the healer couldn’t be excessively attractive. He (or she) could be interesting to look at, and of course, you would expect the eyes to be expressive, perhaps even just a tad maniacal. But the healer could not be physically alluring. And the healer had to have a quiet confidence in his or her abilities. You come to me, if you would like. If you do come, you enter my realm and play by my rules. But I’m not coming to you.
And those with mystical abilities had to be removed from my life. They couldn’t be my cousins or friends, because this would trigger a level of scrutiny that I kept holstered. Why bother with scrutiny? I believe in the possibility of everything, without the burden of having to know anything. There’s nothing wrong with that, nothing escapist or indolent. I have a job, a lifestyle to support, a vague goal of doing pretty well in a decent firm so that I can have an established position in an acceptable manner.
What am I trying to say here? It is this: The healer can’t be in my face, in my life. The mystic cannot be the center of my existence. Yes, I’m using that phrase. Way too soon, right? Except I knew then that it fit, and I also knew that there was nothing romantic about my status. I was becoming entwined, against my will. I was no longer along for the ride. I was hijacked. How did I know this? Because for all of the frustrations Erica caused me, I sensed that her absence would resurrect the void from which I had escaped. How pathetic. Before Erica, I was captive to the bonds of hollow routine, and now, I was simply a different kind of prisoner. But I intuited a redeeming feature, namely, that frustration would be my annoying savior, because—for reasons beyond my pay grade—I couldn’t be frustrated and empty at the same time. So I resolved then to assert myself, not through escape but in gaining control of my captor. I would wrestle with the situation, with Erica. I would contain her. I may have been a reactive type, but this did not leave me powerless. I had my intelligence, my stability, my will. I repeated this to myself many times. I began to believe it.