to the treasures, I’m far too attached to things, I’m afraid . . . probably my Leo moon that’s responsible. I’ve lived in a lot of places and brought back keepsakes.”
One of the bedrooms had been turned into a library-study; books lined every wall and surface. The excess crystal inventory from the shop was scattered ubiquitously, under chairs, on tables, inside cabinets. In the bedroom, an immense pink rose quartz lived under the bed. “Great for opening the heart charka,” Ellie explained, with a grin. A huge bronze gong was flanked by two exquisite Thangka paintings from Tibet. Maggie’s appraising eye noted the sensitivity of taste which each piece had been chosen.
“I can’t figure out how you’ve got these books arranged,” she said, bringing her attention back to the orderly shelves. “How do you find things if they’re not alphabetized?”
Ellie handed three more volumes to Maggie and laughed.
“Oh, they’re alphabetized all right. By author’s first names. Just a little intellectual snobbery on my part. Sometimes I get pissed off knowing people dismiss me as a pea brain because I’m into metaphysics. So, I fight back in little ways to amuse myself. I suppose that’s why I’ve got half a doctoral dissertation in my top desk drawer.”
Everything about Ellie was a surprise, Maggie thought, suppressing a smile. The wifty effervescence she affected belied a swift intelligence and an intuition that obviously perceived life through a different set of lenses.
“Where’s your master’s from?” she asked, liking the woman.
“Berkeley, where else?” Ellie answered, pouring a glass of wine from a cooled bottle. She was cooking something Muscovian, she said, rattling off the name in a superb Russian accent. The pungent aroma filled the apartment tantalizingly, and balalaika music lent its melancholy strains on the stereo.
“I’ve done the whole nine yards, Mags, since the late sixties.” Maggie noticed, amused, that Ellie had given her a new nickname without any ceremony. “Anything an intellectual flower child could do, I did. Lived three years with a guru in India to study Sanskrit . . . lived a year and half in a Zen monastery, sitting zazen at four A.M. every day and freezing my ass off, while I chanted.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Oh yes, and let’s not forget how I wandered around South America for eighteen months, going to crystal digs and studying Capoiera. Then I came home and apprenticed myself to a Chinese doctor for two years, so I could learn acupuncture.”
Ellie had a good, strong-boned face, Maggie saw, as she talked so earnestly; pretty, interesting, betraying little about her age.
“I did everything you might expect,” Ellie said with a likable grin. “Protested the war, got jailed in Chicago, helped run an abortion referral service during the coat-hanger era . . .” She took a sip of wine and stirred something on the stove, sniffed, added some sort of pungent seasoning, then sat down again on a zafu in the middle of the floor.
“And a few things I wouldn’t expect?”
“Yeah, I guess you could say that. My family is half Russian and half Cherokee, so I was doomed from childhood by being psychic . . . visions, out-of-body experiences, past life memories, more vivid than kindergarten ever was. I had it all.
“Fortunately, I was raised mostly by my grandmothers, since my mother worked and my father wandered. I bounced back and forth between their two worlds, and neither side of the family thought it was odd to have my gifts, they more or less expected it. So instead of discouraging me, the taught me—magic from one side, spirit guidance from the other. They were both unbelievable women—tough as leather, female as Moon Maidens. I go to Mother Hale’s every Wednesday night to hold AIDS babies, as my way of paying back the Universe for all those two gave me.”
“How extraordinary,”
One of the bedrooms had been turned into a library-study; books lined every wall and surface. The excess crystal inventory from the shop was scattered ubiquitously, under chairs, on tables, inside cabinets. In the bedroom, an immense pink rose quartz lived under the bed. “Great for opening the heart charka,” Ellie explained, with a grin. A huge bronze gong was flanked by two exquisite Thangka paintings from Tibet. Maggie’s appraising eye noted the sensitivity of taste which each piece had been chosen.
“I can’t figure out how you’ve got these books arranged,” she said, bringing her attention back to the orderly shelves. “How do you find things if they’re not alphabetized?”
Ellie handed three more volumes to Maggie and laughed.
“Oh, they’re alphabetized all right. By author’s first names. Just a little intellectual snobbery on my part. Sometimes I get pissed off knowing people dismiss me as a pea brain because I’m into metaphysics. So, I fight back in little ways to amuse myself. I suppose that’s why I’ve got half a doctoral dissertation in my top desk drawer.”
Everything about Ellie was a surprise, Maggie thought, suppressing a smile. The wifty effervescence she affected belied a swift intelligence and an intuition that obviously perceived life through a different set of lenses.
“Where’s your master’s from?” she asked, liking the woman.
“Berkeley, where else?” Ellie answered, pouring a glass of wine from a cooled bottle. She was cooking something Muscovian, she said, rattling off the name in a superb Russian accent. The pungent aroma filled the apartment tantalizingly, and balalaika music lent its melancholy strains on the stereo.
“I’ve done the whole nine yards, Mags, since the late sixties.” Maggie noticed, amused, that Ellie had given her a new nickname without any ceremony. “Anything an intellectual flower child could do, I did. Lived three years with a guru in India to study Sanskrit . . . lived a year and half in a Zen monastery, sitting zazen at four A.M. every day and freezing my ass off, while I chanted.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Oh yes, and let’s not forget how I wandered around South America for eighteen months, going to crystal digs and studying Capoiera. Then I came home and apprenticed myself to a Chinese doctor for two years, so I could learn acupuncture.”
Ellie had a good, strong-boned face, Maggie saw, as she talked so earnestly; pretty, interesting, betraying little about her age.
“I did everything you might expect,” Ellie said with a likable grin. “Protested the war, got jailed in Chicago, helped run an abortion referral service during the coat-hanger era . . .” She took a sip of wine and stirred something on the stove, sniffed, added some sort of pungent seasoning, then sat down again on a zafu in the middle of the floor.
“And a few things I wouldn’t expect?”
“Yeah, I guess you could say that. My family is half Russian and half Cherokee, so I was doomed from childhood by being psychic . . . visions, out-of-body experiences, past life memories, more vivid than kindergarten ever was. I had it all.
“Fortunately, I was raised mostly by my grandmothers, since my mother worked and my father wandered. I bounced back and forth between their two worlds, and neither side of the family thought it was odd to have my gifts, they more or less expected it. So instead of discouraging me, the taught me—magic from one side, spirit guidance from the other. They were both unbelievable women—tough as leather, female as Moon Maidens. I go to Mother Hale’s every Wednesday night to hold AIDS babies, as my way of paying back the Universe for all those two gave me.”
“How extraordinary,”
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