I don’t remember my age then, making a guess I would say I was perhaps 24 years young.

My current admirer at that time, invited me to his home in the hills of St. Andrew set among big leafy

banana trees, trees with ripening cocoa pods, a scattering of coffee trees, yam mounds, and mango trees.

 

Quite a random farm he said it was. 

But oh, the beauty of the landscape framing the city of Kingston at the foot of those undulating hills.  I was enchanted by the view as I stood on the wrap- around verandah and watched some dark clouds roll towards the house.

I can’t remember the name of my host, the years have pushed him over the cliffs of my memory. all I am recalling is his dark brooding personality. An intense man with very kind eyes.

Whoever the kind soul was, cooked a wonderful meal which was eaten in reverence. The taste of  the food, the blend of the wine, the coffee, Chopin’s Nocturne, B flat.  Why disturb the moment with chatter.

After the dishes were cleared away, as I am remembering, I excused myself to find the bathroom. The house was huge and had traces of eighteenth century architectural plantation life.  Dim hallways begged for a candle stick or oil lamp and then I wandered into a most modern bathroom replete with a bidet.  It seemed that was the only renovation the house received. I liked the merge of the past with the present.

On my way back to the Victorianesque living room, I passed a room with the door slightly ajar and the faint smell of ink on paper assuaged my senses. I pushed the door a bit and as my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I almost fainted. A library like no other.  Needless to say I forgot my present self and entered the room like a hungry young vampire with so many vials of blood to sip from. A wine cellar of words just bleeding with sensory pleasure.

I did not hear him come in, it was his shaving cream or lotion that indicated his maleness and I looked up from the couch I had curled up on into his eyes, deep and brown and almost ghostly. He stretched out his hand indicating that he wanted me to show him what I was reading.

“Thus Spoke Zarathustra”- Nietzsche. 

“You like this book?”  

He turned it around in his hands. I nodded. I had read quite a bit of the small paperback with the very small print.

“You can take it with you, I will give it to you, and if you want you can have the one beside it as well. “Beyond Good and Evil”.

I rose and went to the shelf to take the other before the dream disappeared.

“Thank you, thank you so very much. Would you take me home now please?”

He looked at me for what seemed a long time, ran his fingers through his hair, smiled and said, 

“Alright, whenever you are ready.”

And so I met Friedrich Nietzsche and all my old ideas scattered in the wind. I have never been the same since I took up with that German lunatic.  My host benefactor, and educator, disappeared from my life. I have no idea what became of him because I never saw him or heard from him again, even though I had a working telephone.  However, I still have Nietzsche all over my house, mostly in my library. When I couple him with Kafka, it’s a matter of necessity to be my “own true self.”

Lmh: 1/2017