The Rainer Maria Rilke Elevator Co.

   I have long been convinced that the elevator in my bulding is a portal to somewhere else.

   So today, bearing my heavy burdens, I was waiting on my floor for the doors to open, and there was a woman standing next to me, a woman I did not recognize from among my neighbors.

   When the doors did open, I waved her in ahead of me.

   "Ladies first?" she said. "Or age before beauty?"

   "The former," I told her. "I would never say the latter, and, anyway, I'm 51.  We're probably the same age."

   "I'm 60," she said.

   "Not a distinction worth making," I shot back.

   "Yes. Especially because soon we'll be in heaven, and time doesn't exist there," she said, in the tones of one describing the weather in San Antonio.

   I looked at her in a new way but said nothing.

   "There's no time in heaven. God doesn't exist in time. Time is something he made for us humans to live in," she continued.

   I could have felt alarm at all this being said in a tiny elevator car, but I did not.

   "It's like dreaming," she went on.  "In your dreams, you don't think of time. Time has no relation to your dreams. Unless you're dreaming about time."

   The doors opened, and we stepped out.

   "This has been an unusual elevator chat," I told her.

   "When my daughter died, I was comforted by one verse from the Bible," she went on, still as if we were discussing the Red Sox. " 'In my father's house ...'  "

   " 'There are many mansions,' " I continued.

   " 'If it were not so, I would have told you,' " she ended. "You see? There wll be a place for us."

   Then she walked away into the heat of the afternoon. And I know I will never see her again on this earth.

   

Comments

[a rose is a rose]

touched by an elevator angel? i'm not a believer in religions but i am a believer in ethereal beings as it were or is or will be

my thoughts are with you and your mother.

[ChrisB.]

Song of Childhood
By Peter Handke

When the child was a child
It walked with its arms swinging,
wanted the brook to be a river,
the river to be a torrent,
and this puddle to be the sea.

When the child was a child,
it didn’t know that it was a child,
everything was soulful,
and all souls were one.

When the child was a child,
it had no opinion about anything,
had no habits,
it often sat cross-legged,
took off running,
had a cowlick in its hair,
and made no faces when photographed.

When the child was a child,
It was the time for these questions:
Why am I me, and why not you?
Why am I here, and why not there?
When did time begin, and where does space end?
Is life under the sun not just a dream?
Is what I see and hear and smell
not just an illusion of a world before the world?
Given the facts of evil and people.
does evil really exist?
How can it be that I, who I am,
didn’t exist before I came to be,
and that, someday, I, who I am,
will no longer be who I am?

When the child was a child,
It choked on spinach, on peas, on rice pudding,
and on steamed cauliflower,
and eats all of those now, and not just because it has to.

When the child was a child,
it awoke once in a strange bed,
and now does so again and again.
Many people, then, seemed beautiful,
and now only a few do, by sheer luck.

It had visualized a clear image of Paradise,
and now can at most guess,
could not conceive of nothingness,
and shudders today at the thought.

When the child was a child,
It played with enthusiasm,
and, now, has just as much excitement as then,
but only when it concerns its work.

When the child was a child,
It was enough for it to eat an apple, … bread,
And so it is even now.

When the child was a child,
Berries filled its hand as only berries do,
and do even now,
Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw,
and do even now,
it had, on every mountaintop,
the longing for a higher mountain yet,
and in every city,
the longing for an even greater city,
and that is still so,
It reached for cherries in topmost branches of trees
with an elation it still has today,
has a shyness in front of strangers,
and has that even now.
It awaited the first snow,
And waits that way even now.

When the child was a child,
It threw a stick like a lance against a tree,
And it quivers there still today.

[Kim]

And what will you say to her the next time you meet waiting for the elevator, long time no see? Sorry, your column today is very metaphysical, perhaps a bit of that pesky 11th dimension creeping in on cat's feet.

[elle are]

you had a visitation...thank you for sharing it with us. as the irish know, the veil is thin. everyone can see, but sometimes it's just too hard to look.