The key to Life – entry no. 43

Friday late afternoon

What a night! I’m still so stunned by my meeting with Ruben that I couldn’t concentrate on today’s workshop. But it’s over now, and people are leaving the estate with more information and a better personal network.

Last night after everyone had left the banquet hall I sat and did a status update via my iPhone when Ruben approached and knelt down right in front of me. I was a little flustered; after all, I barely knew him and wasn’t prepared for a proposal. A solemn ambiance that hadn’t been there before set in. He looked me in the eyes and said – I would like to hereby invite you to enter Severin’s world.

I looked at him and he laid a tiny box in my hand. The way he looked at me made me open it right away. Resting inside on a pillow of pink velour was a cross on a chain laid out in a heart shape. My heart leapt into my throat.

-          What is Severin’s world? What’s that?

-          It’s a world for people who are attracted to the extraordinary things in life, he said, and he draped the necklace around my neck.

-          This is an ankh, or an Egyptian cross. In Latin, a crux ansata. The ankh was made by combining the male and female symbols of Osiris and Isis, who in turn are symbols of heaven and earth. The ankh symbolizes “The Key of Life”.

I was moved and stood up to thank him.

-          No need, he said. – You and your model are extraordinary, so I’d like to introduce you to some people whom you’ll find interesting. And who will find you interesting.

-          Thank you, I repeated, and I sensed that a door to a new life had opened right here, in the middle of the banquet hall of a 200 year old estate. In my mind were images of Pandora and the white pure spirits in James Cameron’s masterpiece intermingled with people who smiled and greeted me in a hall that was a hundred times bigger than this banquet hall.

Ruben grasped my hand and kissed it. Both my consciousness and my heart swelled when I took his face in my hands and kissed him. Impassioned, he kissed me. We caressed one another’s bodies and our breath became short. I slipped my fingers between the buttons of his shirt but he grabbed my hand and said – come with me.

We went outside, me in a cocktail dress and bare feet, him in his suit and jacket. He walked quickly and I almost had to run to keep up with his determined stride through the park and up to the garden pavilion. On top of the pavilion was a beautiful stone sculpture of a reclining woman looking over the park.

Inside was a full circle of candles; the garden furniture that had been there earlier was gone and in the middle was a futon covered with gorgeous, peach-coloured Indian silk.

Ruben bowed slightly and invited me inside, and together we reached the stars in ways I have not known before.