A MISSING PAGE

Periodically,fate--or some distorted reflection of Providence-- serves up a mansion to me.
It is always huge, and I am always welcomed as a honored guest.  This should make me
'happy, but whether the mansion is owned by a Baroness, or Sufis, or a Hollywood
producer with some connection to "revolutionaries" or Cyber-punks, it is always
'inhabited by zanies.

If deja vu is merely the body's recollection of a certain texture--say, a sidewalk--
or a rhythm--such as the rhythm of sitting shotgun in an automobile up a bend
of the  road at a certain grade, one might naturally wonder, even so, for
the mansion is always located up a certain bend in the road at a certain grade as
the previous mansions. There is always the green velvet presence of  Italian
cyprus and blue firs en route. The gateway--approached at the twilight hour--
the door--tudor or medieval--and the mansion only appears after a period
of voluntary solitude, the soul's necessity.

That it represents twin wishes--the desire for the magic circle, the temptation
of a group identity--has grown increasingly apparent.  I remember "the Winter
Palace", the Baronesses' spread in Santa Fe, the Sheikh's American digs..
mullioned and bevelled, the carpets thick.There is, despite marked differences
in the locales a certain note of the salon, something fin de sciele
and trop Lalique about each of them. But perhaps this reflects nothing
more than a taste for the etiolated among rich intellectuals.

And this may be why they like me.

(1992?)