A Sense of Where You Are

Say what you will. I share your skepticism, believe me. I was having a massage yesterday. I was on my back, the masseuse was standing behind my head and she was holding my head in her hands for a really long time. She held me really still. Then all of a sudden I started to smile and almost burst into laughter. I felt weightless, as if I'd sort of taken a brief vacation from my body.

Now don't get excited.

I wasn't "looking down at myself" from somewhere else in the room. I was both on the table and sort of not on the table... I felt as if gravity had removed itself from the equation. And strangely enough, I then began to feel that I was on the same plane, sharing the same space with my mother. Not that she was there mind you. She didn't pop in for a visit or anything like that. It's just that I felt as if I'd slipped through a seam into some other place or more precisely, some other sense... Like I'd magically entered the back door of an odd house and didn't know how I'd got there. And it was utterly different from anyplace I'd been before. And I couldn't help but sense that I was sharing that place with my mother; as if she were somewhere else in that house...

The masseuse told me later that she felt my mother's presence too, although I think for her it might have an overdose of sandalwood oil.

Excellent massage with liberal use of sandalwood oil accompanied by "all time favorite" tunes of massage therapists everywhere: $60.00. Out of body experience with Mom: Priceless.

Reeking of sandalwood, my eyes burning from crying and incense and oil, I headed out the door and with my ever lovely wife, headed straight downtown for the Afghan takeout joint on Lombard Street.