IDIOT SAVANT
Idiot Savant is a work of romantic fiction. Any resemblance to persons (particularly, the author), places (where the author lives), or events (such as his life) is entirely coincidental.
Desi DuCoeur is a 42-year-old director of services at The Oaks, a residential retirement home. He joins a gym to fight for his fading youth. Early one morning a smile causes unexpected movement in his chest…
CHAPTER ONE
idiot savant
Ka-boom! goes the heart quake.
There you are! did you hear the slams?
The aerobic heart banging the signal like a primitive ritual.
But the pounding flattens my confidence, silences my voice.
To be beaten up by your own blood-banger is troubling, confusing
-- can the thrust be trusted?
The heart’s an idiot savant playing music of the soul
while playing the fool. Feeling erupts like a severed artery;
songs try to control the flow until there’s a connection.
There’s feelings of love, feelings of hope, feelings of instability.
Gushing sensitivities wait and wade,
yearning turning over and over in waves.
A blessing and a curse,
feelings of separation, feelings of the worst,
feelings of seeing, feelings of not being,
feelings of believing, feelings of you leaving, heaving
…tangoed up by you, dancing with insanity
A Glance of Truth
What is truth? It’s true that she smiled and it’s true I felt something wonderful like she had gone straight inside and injected hope; but I also felt I might be imagining the whole momentary incident, and that I’m projecting secret wishes into a passing glance. So what’s true is that I don’t know the truth of this incident. It has played over and over in my head and just admitting this fact also makes me question my state of mind. Am I seeing correctly and feeling her feelings, or is this just wishful thinking?
What’s true is that I am drawn toward her and I’m not sure how and why this has happened. I’m very attracted to her solitary movements, self-determination and independence and feel intuitively close to her from afar. For a brief moment our glances met and, at least for me, it truly stirred something inside -- An unspoken and unrehearsed moment of vulnerability and understanding that intuition translates into a sense of a ‘mutual attraction’. I think I know her but haven’t met her. This is the crazy part of it all. What is projection, what is intuition? I cannot deny the feelings, I just don’t know how to handle it and I can’t help but wonder if it exists only within the confines of me.
I know my current relationship with Joann possesses very little feeling, except comfort and dependability. But the romance is gone. Continual disagreements have taken over. Only after a stressful argument is there some romantic passion. And that lasts about a day before a discontentment returns. The peace process is full of unyielding regretful compromise. Maybe once you get to know someone so well the mystique, a key ingredient in romance, disappears. You learn the limitations of the other person and you know how badly things will become if those borders get crossed. Once you know someone, then what? A peace treaty is needed for survival from the differences.
Is romance an escape from stagnation? Or is it a signal to change, of a needed change? Somewhere someone will truly love and believe and see me as I am and see the things I can be. Someone will empower me to become better. That’s what I want in a relationship. I want to empower someone equally through love and understanding. Joann is not doing that. At one time, during the getting-to-know-each-other phase, the potential seemed much greater than the resulting reality of today. We lead such separate lives and have such different interests. I have a working career; she has art. Her family has money and that keeps her from going out into the world and struggling the way I have had to struggle. Unearned money weakens people. She’s trying to find her place in the world but will never acknowledge as much. I think her lack of experience in a relationship has made her play it safe, be conservative and not make any mistakes. Rigid parenting has molded her into a rigid adult. She is unforgiving toward those who make mistakes. The rigidity gets twisted with her discontent and she becomes very judgmental toward others. She’s critical, sarcastic and lacking any sense of self-deprecating humor. Writing this is making me angry. We should not be together. This has gone on too long.
I don’t know how to break-up, unable to face the certain wrath with a more honest approach. It’s usually some small incident that gets blown out of proportion, and then the discontentment emerges. I cannot handle her violent temper accompanied by her continual shouting. I try to keep calm and explain what I think is happening between us but she becomes enraged, twists and exploits every minor digression into a tirade of blame. I feel guilty when she starts crying, figuring I’ve been a bastard to hurt her so. Maybe I’ve been wrong, maybe my mood is not good, maybe I’m missing the finer points of our being together. She cries on the bed, I feel horrible and stressed and want my own emotional pain to end, to get off the hellish roller coaster. I join her on the bed so that we eventually calm down. Things are amazingly calm after the brutal passage, so much so that everything suddenly feels okay by comparison. We inevitably ‘make up’-- which is actually a cover up of the incompatibility issues once more. So we ‘make up’ a reason to stay together (i.e., it’s been a stressful day) to stop the immediate emotional pain, but the next day the uneasiness sets in, and the cycle continues.
That momentary glance/probe at the gym seems to be a turning point, a signal of hope, a sign of change, whether or not this attractive unknown woman intended it that way. Since I felt her glance I’ve been hopeful and full of feeling. It isn’t just that the grass seems greener elsewhere; intuition’s nudging its pointer to the fact that one relationship must end and that a new beginning is possible, probable, and preferred. Life could be significantly better and happier: that is the truth of the glance.