Yet, that lost feeling came back again. Last night as Daniel slept, I wandered outside in the gated complex for over an hour. Six foot square trellises sprang up at the occasional intersection. The flowers were soft, fragile, very red. By the walkways I stepped through were jasmine blooms and lilies, small varieties of shrubs threading through the ground. I kept walking until I was lost. The overhanging foliage, close cropped grasses, even the pools and the bogenvia vines guarding them with barbed fingers had a subdued feminine quality to them. I came upon a building with an electric candle lantern out front. Looking in I saw a simple carpet with a light crimson/black stripped border. The lamps inside were subdued and shadded. Even the chairs had a mute green tone to them. Something about this room spoke to me, reminded me of these memories I have of a room, maybe an ampitheatre or stage all in red. There I sit down, naked, young I think, being questioned or speaking to old people in odd dress. But then there's something about the colors of this room, the delicately twisting branches collected in a basket for show, even the wood color that foreshadows something. Are these feelings of longing for something I lost? Is this feeling of richness something I can gain later on?

The more I thought about it as I walked away and back several times, something about the interior felt hidden, like a secret. And in a way the feeling I had was something I rarely pay attention to. I'm used to it being a fantasy, a phantasm. It's too rich and full to be real. It's the feeling I have around well manicured gardens, when the cityscape hits my eye just right as someone playfully hits my shoulder, when I can reach out and feel the life force in people, in places and see what they're really all about. The more I think about it, the more this feeling becomes an uncovered fact of life, some bitter grape to sarcastically deny. But this is the thing I believe in...past everything and everyone else, THIS is the place I am searching for, hunting after, whatever is held by those colors or that kind of room or even that kind of energy, that feeling. That is the point, the key. What is it that I can do to get at it. Maybe curl up and dream like a stock character from some Russian novel or some old man forgetting the past to remember it better. Whatever it is I've rediscovered it...and I must know, I must know how to get back there and just where there is.

But the red room and the people...did that happen, will that happen, was I the boy or will I find someone with that sense of meaning and potential? Or really anyone that is capable of bringing out that hidden feeling? I can't say.

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