Chapter 4: Julian

“Hi”, Mara says, after I’ve awkwardly walked back through the door to sit down next to her on the steps. I look at her blankly. I don’t know if I’m angry at her, or simply confused, or what to feel, really. What is she doing here? How does she even know where I work? Then I remember, I told her once, over coffee. But it still doesn’t even begin to cover her randomly showing up in places. Again. My confusion must have been showing on my face, because Mara looks at me softly and says, in a quiet, gentle voice, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for just showing up here.” I nod, but don’t say anything. I still don’t know what to say. “You must be wondering why I’m here”, Mara continues. I nod again. “I don’t exactly know how to explain”, Mara says. “I just had this really strong feeling. Like I was supposed to tell you something yesterday, but I didn’t. I chickened out. Because I didn’t want to be weird. But then I couldn’t sleep all night. Like I messed up somehow.” Now that she’s mentioned it, she does look tired. Disheveled, even. Like she forgot to brush her hair in the morning. I look at her, still feeling confused and suspicious, if slightly less so. “What were you supposed to tell me?” I ask. My voice comes out sharp, and dry. 

Mara looks at me, as if trying to mince her words into a coherent statement. “I think there’s someone you’re supposed to meet, Leia”, she says. “My friend Julian. I think he can help.” She sounds nervous now, as if she expects me to tell her off, to yell at her for being weird. To be fair, she really is being weird, so it makes sense for her to worry. I’d worry, if I was in her shoes. I feel a bit softer, seeing her so vulnerable. “Why?” I ask, looking at her with a mixture of gentleness and intrigue. Mara turns towards me, her face animated. There’s a little charge in the air, as if she’s giving up something secret and risky. “He’s an energy healer”, she says. “I know that probably sounds weird. But I really think you should meet him.” 

I nod, still feeling a little confused and wrong-footed. “Okay”, I say. The words are out of my mouth before my mind can really catch up with the situation. I’m not entirely sure what to say to her. Energy healing is a bit out there, even for me. But there is something about Mara’s sincerity. Her vulnerability in showing up here, her willingness to be weird. Maybe I just can’t resist the pull of weirdness myself. It makes me feel special somehow, like for once something interesting is happening to me. I’m not the kind of person interesting things normally happen to. I’m the kind of person who reads stories about people who interesting things happen to. And maybe I’m the kind of person who reads stories and thinks to herself that if a talking squirrel ever showed up in my life, telling me to go somewhere, I’d go. When you’re in a story and something weird happens, telling you to go somewhere, you go. So I guess I’m deciding to go. “Okay”, I say again, with a little more firmness. “I’ll meet him. Just tell me where to go.” Mara smiles at me happily, and gets busy setting up the meeting for Wednesday afternoon.

When Wednesday comes around I feel a bit more rested and steady, and ready for an adventure. I’m wearing my favorite coat and hat, and I’ve left a note on the kitchen fridge, telling my friends where I am. Just in case. Right now I’m pacing, on the street corner, in front of the door. I feel curious, excited, but also more than a little nervous. I’m a little early, enough that ringing the doorbell feels awkward. So I just wait, pacing back and forth, checking the time on my phone every minute or so. I take a long calming breath. Then it occurs to me: What if I got the time wrong. Or the day. Maybe I got confused, and the meeting was yesterday. I double check my text messages. The texts assure me I am to meet Julian today, at 4pm. It’s 4:01. Breathe, Leia, breathe, I remind myself. Adventure, my ass. It’s 4:02 and I bite off another fingernail. 

The setup is unassuming. A non-descript two story building at the corner of a little street, close to Lake Merritt. One of Oakland’s more up-and-coming areas. Pretty sure at least one of the floors is a doctor’s office, or a law practice or some such. Not particularly impressive, I’d intuitively expected something more… flashy. There’s a keypad next to the doorbells. I don’t know the key code. Somehow I really wish I knew the key code. I take a breath. It’s 4:05. 

It’s 4:07 when the door finally opens. A tall, dark-haired man steps out, as I awkwardly maneuver to get out of his way in time. “Are you Leia?” he asks. I nod. “Come on in” he says and gesturing for me to follow. I follow him up a set of stairs, and through a door, into a small front room that might generously be called a waiting room. I’m not sure yet how generous I’m feeling about all of this though. “Would you like a cup of tea?” he asks, and gestures to a fancy coffee machine, on top of a mini fridge, stacked on top of a chair. I’m pretty sure it’s one of those machines that makes coffee from little plastic pods. I don’t see any little plastic pods. I also don’t see any teabags. Weighing my options I decide I am probably not up for interacting with the pod machine. I shake my head no.

“Shall we then?” he asks. His voice is deep and melodic, with the faintest hint of an accent, just barely noticeable. It sounds vaguely British, making me wonder where he’s from. I nod again, and follow him into yet another room. This room is even smaller, and most of the floor space is taken up by a large medical grade massage table. The thing looks complicated, and heavy. I idly wonder how he got it up the stairs. Squeezed into the corner are two small arm chairs, flanking a tiny side table. Several fist sized crystals are crammed on top of the table, next to a red tea mug. We sit down, awkwardly. The chairs are slightly too close together, for lack of space. I bend my legs to the side, to avoid touching his knees with mine as he slouches his tall body into the chair.

“Hi!” he says. “I am Julian.” His voice sounds warm, and self-assured. Of course it does. “I’m Leia” I say. Then I blush. He already knew that. “Leia” he repeats. He pauses, then asks the obligatory question. “Like in Star Wars, hm?” Most people I meet assume that it’s unpleasant to be named after a famous movie character. But I secretly like it. At the very least it provides an easy ice breaker whenever I really need one. I smoothly rattle off some cached answers about how my parents really liked princess Leia and they thought it would be inspiring to be named after a strong female hero. I give a bashful smile. He smiles back.

We talk about small things for a while. About living in the Bay Area. About Mara. He apologizes for the shabbiness of his office. “We had to leave our previous place on short notice” he explains. “Mara found this place on craigslist.” The conversational flow is easy and engaging. Within a few minutes I catch myself feeling comfortable. I remind myself to remain a bit skeptical, as is appropriate for the weirdness of the situation.

Then I decide to make a move. “So, this energy thing” I say. “How does this work?” He ponders the question for a moment. Leaning back, he sighs dramatically before making eye contact. “You’re from a psychology background” he says, making it sound like a question. I explain that I am a therapist, and that I work with Internal Family Systems Therapy.  “It’s a system that assumes that the psyche is composed of various parts or sub personalities” I explain. I’m about to launch into a lengthy exposition, when he waves me off. “It’s an introspective system” he prompts, half statement, half question again. I nod. “How do you think introspection works?” he asks. I think for a moment, caught slightly off guard. “It has to do with resonance.” I explain. “You look for resonance between the statement and the felt sense, the felt belief that is there.” He looks at me sharply. “But how do you know that the statement actually matches what is in the person’s mind? What if instead they are replacing what was there with what they are saying?” Taking aback by his intensity I try to think of a good response. 

A few time-diluted moments later I am still trying. Thoughts float out of my focus like fast-spinning dancers. Centrifugal force. Weightlessness. My senses sharpen an order of magnitude, gaining detail fractally. Wordlessly I wonder if someone has spiked my tea with LSD. I take a breath. The breath moves through me, leaving me surprised, as if breathing had never happened before and was happening for the first time in this moment. My vision feels like it has depth, an extra dimension that is both new and familiar at the same time. Had it been flat before? I look at the red cup, seeing for the first time that its surface has texture, isn’t smoothly abstract but made of tiny irregularities. Its realness startles me. I notice I never drank any tea.

Julian smiles at me. I wordlessly wonder if he knows what’s going on with me. The thoughts, or whatever they are, float by like colorful shapes. I catch one and turn it slowly. It’s composed of a red-orange gradient. I let it go and it keeps spinning for a while, before it partially dissolves and then moves on. I look into Julian’s eyes. His eyes seem like they belong to many generations of Julians, reaching back a hundred years. There is something startlingly real about him, as if I’d never quite noticed that other people have the same kind of intense, moment-by-moment experience, and life, that I have. Words still elude me. 

“How are you?” he asks me. His voice startles me a little, or maybe I’m just expecting it to startle me, as if it would have startled me if I had drifted off into non-reality. I’m about to answer him, or try to, when I notice that he already knows what I am going to say. Or, more precisely, he already knows what I feel.  What my state is like. I pause again. He nods. I can feel him assessing me. I can feel his mind, as it is assessing me. I can feel his mind, as if it’s part of my sense-field. 

“Is this what it’s like for you?” I ask, and somehow he knows what I mean. I can sense him knowing what I mean. He nods, slowly. “Yes, and no”, he says and I know what he means. I know what he means by “yes”, and I know what he means by “no” and why he is saying the words he is saying and not other words instead. Somehow I know, the same way I know what I feel, or why I do what I do. The knowledge of how his experience and my experience are different, and how they are similar, it’s just there. “Was this always here?” I ask. He nods. Yes, and no. Yes, and no.

"Did you cause this?" I ask, and he tilts his head. The thoughts are still dissolving around me, through me. They're passing through my field of awareness, and are changed by it, gain dimension, as they dissolve. I can tell that Julian has decided on an answer, has picked one option out of the endlessly infinite gradient of possible things to say. "You could learn to do this by yourself." he answers. I sit there, in the dissolving, which somehow makes me feel more like myself, rather than less. I sit with the weight of what he's told me, what he is showing me. I could learn to do this by myself.

I leave his office still fully in the process of dissolving. It’s almost dark outside. Somewhere during the session I’ve lost all sense of what time it is. It must be after six, at least. My senses are sharpened and the evening twilight feels like the night sky, like outer space, vast, dark, and full of beauty. All objects have a subtle sparkle to them, like they’re covered in tiny diamonds. I cross the street, get into my car and drive home, slowly, and very carefully.