The Ant, Melville

Thursday, May 06, 2004

Service: * * * 1/2
Food: N/A
Ambience: * * * *
Babe Count: * * * *

I finished work at around eight o'clock tonight, and headed off to Hyde Park for a delicious omelette at JB Rivers. Eran called. "Hey, Roy, come to Melville. Bunch of people with me. Including Lucinda from Cape Town."

I like the sound of that.

The Ant is tiny and smoky. Eran's brother, Amichai, an artist is there. He looks at my sketchbook. "Roy," he says, in a thick Israeli accent, "come for lessons, man. I give them to you for free. I'll teach you about shading. Look at this, man, you're concentrating on line work. Learn to shade. It'll open your work up, man. And maybe your composition will open up too. You've gotten static. Come for a lesson."

He gives me his card. Of course I'll go for a lesson. Brilliant.

Jade's also here. Eran's babe-o-rama girlfriend. She's delectable. But she's looking sad tonight. Not saying too much. Not talkative at all. A bit of tension in the air?

And then there's Lucinda from Cape Town. Sigh. Babeage. Deluxe.

Originally from London, has been in South Africa for years now.

"How long?" I ask.

"Oh, about three," she says.

"What do you do?" I ask.

"Oh, no," she says, "I realllllly don't want to talk shop now. I've decided that I work too hard, and I want to have a life outside work."

"Oh," I say. "Okay. What's your favourite movie?"

"That's work," she says.

"Favourite book?"

"Got turned into a movie," she says.

She's blonde. Killer figure. I pull out the ink and the trusty Maped Ruling Pen.

"Are you going to draw me?" she says.

"With no shading," I tell her.

"Please don't emphasise the Habsburg jaw," she pleads.

It's true. She DOES have a rather large jaw. But it's a very nice looking large jaw.

Somehow, I manage to get the conversation beyond one-syllable, "That's work!" answers, and we start gelling. Talk about relationships. And she opens up a bit. Finds Cape Town to be a very difficult place to meet really nice guys. Is still smarting from the end of her London relationship. Feels homeless.

I read her palm.

"Can you really do this?" she asks. "Or are you just feeding me lines, telling me what I want to hear?"

"A little bit of both," I say. I'm a bit psychic, and I've got some seriously advanced exposure to therapy, having been in therapy for the better part of a decade, and having been a crisis counsellor. But most of all, I'm exceptionally intuitive, and I really do work at being in tune with myself and with the people around me.

And I do have a bit of palmreading experience. I was interested in it when I was in high school, and I did a bit back then.

So now I'm looking at her hand. And she's got the most unusual head line I've ever seen, with no heart line. Well, not that the heart line is COMPLETELY absent. It's more like it's vestigial. "This is what I'm getting," I say. "My guess is that around the age of 16 you had a serious health crisis. Life-altering."

Her eyes go wide, and her large jaw drops. "How did you know that!!!??"

I point to a snarl-up on her life line. "That's around 16," I say.

"Glandular fever," she says. "Definitely life-changing. Still suffer from some of the side effects. Tiredness. Lack of endurance."

"Okay," I say. "This strong head line. To me, it indicates that you're really very intellectually inclined, and that you've developed huge defences against your emotions. You've been badly hurt in relationships, and you simply don't want that again."

She nods.

I continue. "But, the fleshiness here and here indicates that you're actually quite a sensual woman, and that you're somehow repressing that. There's a wild, emotional woman inside you, and you're searching to let her out. That's what this vestigial heart line and the fleshiness show me."

"I'm trapped in my head," she says. "But I love massage and body work like that."

It's just her and me at this point. Eran is talking to Jade. Amichai and his buddy have left. And it's late in the restaurant.

"Okay," I say. "Put your left hand here." I put my own hand on my chest, over the heart chakra. Lucinda follows suit on her own heart chakra. I'm still holding her right hand. I start calling on energy from the universe, and ask my ritual question silently. Dear Universe, I say, my eyes half-closed, please bring white light and healing to Lucinda, if it's for the greatest good. I say to her, "Okay, now breath," and I take a deep breath myself.

I feel my hands warming up, and the energy is flowing. And her eyes are half closed, and there's a look of almost surprised bliss on her face. It's as though she's never had the opportunity to get in touch with her heart.

I breath a few more times. Then I say, "Okay, we'll stop when you're ready. Come back in your own time." She breaths a few more times, blinks, opens her eyes. I keep holding her hand between mine. "How was that?" I ask.

She ponders. "It was amazing," she says. "I wish I could have that more often in my life. I'm always so in my head, so intellectual."

"Would you like to be able to do that at will?"

"Yes."

"Okay," I say, "let's go back to it." She puts her hand over her solar plexus, breaths, and she's back in, just like that. "Now we're going to anchor it." I press my forefinger to my thumb and ask her if she ever uses that gesture in real life.

"No," she says.

"Cool. Now follow me. Feel this blissful feeling. Now touch your finger and thumb together." She does it. "Release." She does. "And breath in, feel the bliss, touch them together." She does. We repeat it several times.

"What we've done is a neuro-linguistic anchoring," I say. "Your homework for the next week is to access this feeling as many times as you can every day by touching your finger to your thumb. Repeat this about ten or fifteen times per session, and as many sessions as you can get to. After that, you'll be able to get to this state any time you want by just making this gesture."

"Thank you, Roy," she says. "Phshew. I really didn't think I'd end up having a healing session tonight with a total stranger."

"When are you moving to Joburg?" I say.