Shannon and Socrates

TALK ABOUT ATTRACTION OF OPPOSITES

Alan Ross <alanzip@gmail.com>

3:36 PM (11 minutes ago)

DIALECTICS AND THE ATTRACTION OF OPPOSITES. Or SHANNON and SOCRATES

I stayed with my grandkids in Dallas, over the Xmas holidays. I had hoped to jump on a plane to visit my ex-wife and two daughters in Maui, but somehow the airport game did not appeal to me, which in hindsight was a smart move. (Did everyone and their baggage finally arrive at their destination, I wonder?) Seeing the airport chaos it invoked. I think I made a wise choice.

Shannon also invited me to spend the holidays with her in New Jersey. And being a Brit who left London many moons ago. (Where warm weather is a luxury, rarely enjoyed) I decided to stay put in my small pad on Venice Beach and spend a very quiet uneventful holiday with Ricky, my grandson.

Now Shannon is a beautifully attractive Brit, who left the old country about the same time as I did, in the sixties, when it was much simpler to gain American citizenship, (just a couple of forms, a routine physical and the welcome mat was virtually waiting for us as we de-planed).

The holidays are always a time for deeply engrained memories. From the time my elder sister Barbara dispelled my belief in Santa Claus, (But introduced me to dialectic thinking). This was a lot to take in before the age of five, but it made a lot more sense to me than an old bearded gent dressed in red, toddling down our chimney with a few toys.

My elder sister Barbara was my early mentor, as there was very limited schooling  in the war years. I remember her doing her homework and mixing her  lemon cake batter at the same time. “Listen Brother , I have an opinion or I say something important, like an edict or statement, that’s called the thesis, then If you or someone argues, opposes or improves it, that would be called the antithesis, from which a new statement or position is arrived at, that would be called the synthesis. See it’s all a matter of threes, like act one, we’re born, we live a good productive life, act two, and then we retire and die, act three. Or like birth or electricity, you need a man and a woman for birth, and you need a positive and negative charge to make electricity happen.” She didn’t care that I was four, going on five. But somehow it sunk in and made a primitive kind of impression. (Plus, because I listened, she let me lick the mixing spoon) Such was my brilliant sister, (Rest her soul) “It all comes in threes.”  She said. “Just like the three points of the triangle.”

It's truly amazing how our brain associates our thoughts to various scraps of information. An odd piece of wrapping paper, for example, gives me a mental pictures of rising from an Everest mound of wrapping paper under the Christmas tree, as our two excitedly screaming daughters enjoyed and embraced their presents, and our one-eyed, honey brown mutt Pablo, pawed the paper off his new squeaker toy (How he always found his wrapped gift, was always beyond our ken), at the ungodly hour of six in the morning. Ah memories forever cherished. And yet—

The memories of Shannon at last Christmas, stayed well to the forefront of those with my early Venice family. How so, and why, when I knew it was a relationship that was never meant to be?

But I’m getting ahead of myself. That’s how it is with me. Why my over-active mind keeps me awake until the wee small hours. And one thought is uppermost, how this reminds me of that, and another pathway in my overactive brain gets another rethink. Like I know that a few days with Shannon in New Jersey would engage me in the most marvelous sexual activity I had ever experienced in my young life, for after all I am a very young man who has been on this earth for a verrrrrrrrrrrrry long time. (One does not talk years numbers in the biz of Hollyweird).

 Although it always amazes me how the highways and byways of the brain stir up memories, like the connection to Shannon, when I slept in my granddaughter Miranda’s den,  which she gracefully turned into my bedroom when I paid her a visit in Dallas last summer.. I marveled at the magnetic doo-dahs on her desk. One of them was a miniature ball in the shape of the world floating in mid-air. The inventor had figured out the perfect balance between the negative and positive poles and the small globe of the world was thus held in space in the middle of the protruding arms barely an inch to spare between the upper and the lower.

I thought then how totally symbolic this was to my relationship with Shannon, that opposites are in fact necessary. That the Socratic theory of dialectics, was perhaps nature’s way of promulgating diversity in the human species.

How strangely symbolic, even though I know that firstly must come the spiritual, (The look, the meeting of the eyes, the merry twinkle that says so much, then the physical, and of course the mental, all the necessary elements), 

Why then,  I wondered, in my case, did the physical predominate?

To say we were ill-suited is a vast understatement. In fact, it was as she later admitted, her mistake. And what a marvelous mistake it turned out to be. She had answered the wrong personal ad in the L.A. Times. (They were most popular in the 70' and 80's. Sadly they are published no more). I couldn't have been more specific when I wrote my Men Seeking Women ad. Ex-Venice Brit hippie (Right brained kinda writer) seeks ex-flowerchild. Let's get in touch.

Shannon who had just had cataract surgery meant to answer the ad just above mine, which when I read it, was. in my estimation, strident in tone and to the effect written by and from a decided left-brain accountant. She replied to my ad with a short letter, including her phone number, informing me she was an ex-pat and lived in West Hills, some forty driving minutes away from my home in Venice. She included a picture, a most attractive lady. strolling through London’s Piccadilly Circus, arm in arm with an older gent. (Her ex). After my short poetic reply, I received her next note inviting me for dinner the following Thursday. One phone call later, with a well accented English accent, she informed me she would leave the front door unlocked and would be waiting poolside with hors d‘oeuvres. So, hippie-like I of course opened the door, walked through her polished hardwood oak hallway, into a neat oak and tiled kitchen, took off all my clothes dropped them beside the screen door, took a quick look in her direction and dove into her beautiful pool. I quickly surfaced at the deep end, and sure enough there she waited before me with a glass of wine and a tray of assorted goodies, including toasted lox and cream cheese fingers.

 "I expected nothing less from you" were her first words, as she threw a lavender perfumed towel over my shoulder. It was followed by a delicious, broiled salmon dinner as we casually talked about changes in the old country and the rampant inflation, especially. when they changed to the decimal monetary system.

We soon realized in the ensuing couple of hours that this was a total personal mismatch. Here was a West Hills stately home, decorated modern style, complete with projection tv, oak and marble countertop and every piece of furniture seemingly expensive and well matched.

Nothing seemed to be working in our conversation. We both realized we had far less in common when our conversation dwelt in impersonal inanities, yet we both affected the compromise of genial common sense and kind words. She of course was on the defensive when she realized she had answered the wrong ad.

 AND YET---WHAT NOW? 

 I of course called the following day with highly infused thanks for a lovely evening. She ended the brief conversation when she said; “I couldn't believe it, when I saw you dive into my pool completely naked.”  Then a long telephone pause.  “But I'm glad you did and I would like to reciprocate, but there would be too many observers at your pool, especially on a sunny weekend, with the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, so I suggest you return here on Saturday evening if you have nothing on." She had no need to elaborate.  And the following Saturday evening I of course repeated the procedure of Thursday night. The difference being, when I arrived at the small food laden table beside her pool, there was no lady to greet me, but there was a note on the lavender perfumed towel, directing me to the bedroom upstairs. (It was as if she had a prescience knowledge of my lingerie tastes and as she later informed me, that after a marriage in which much needed romance was severely lacking, her physical desires had been left simmering on the back burner. But later over a marvelous paella dinner, when the ensuing conversation meandered into politics, (my least favorite subject), I knew there was no future when she aired her most definitive views on the pros and cons of marriage and stated emphatically that Donald Trump was the new savior of mankind. I knew then that any hope of a totally full relationship with any sort of future was doomed.

When on a later date I refuted the prospect of marriage, she informed me she would sell the house and move to her daughter’s family in New Jersey. But ah what remained was an unforgettable two thirds of that bountiful triangle and a beautifully enduring long-distance friendship.

BUT

 I am still alone on Venice Beach, waiting patiently for the emergence of the synthesis.

Abraham Alan Ross.

alanzip@gmail.com

310-579-1646

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