… before I go in to face my destiny, in the waiting room that is where I am, the tension room as I call it, the before room, the cell before the execution chamber. How difficult that room can be? I have read and listen to stories of people on death row, we wouldn’t bother ourselves with the crime that lead to the situation, but this where they have found themselves. Slowly they are moved closer and closer to the execution chamber until they are just feets away, they can hear the cries and smell of those being executed! What a death before the death! In my opinion this is worse than the actual execution. We might as well get it done and over with. The waiting must be excruciating. Being so close and seeing it almost happening, not being able to run to it or run away from it. That tight rope stage!
I once watched a movie, with Tom Hanks and Megan Ryan, ‘You’ve got mail’ this was adapted from an older movie titled ‘The Shop around the corner’. I quite like the older version. 2 employees that couldn’t stand each other did not immediately know they were falling in love with each other. It is that ‘falling’ – you see it coming and you want to hold it back, you want to abate it. In the scene of disclosure, there were exchange of lines that I love very much, the guy Alfred Kralik couldn’t take it any longer in the waiting room, when he blurted the famous line ” …“My dearest sweetheart, Klara, I can’t stand it any longer. Take your key and open post office box 237 and take me out of my envelope… and kiss me.” Just to say, I have been waiting so long, I can’t wait any longer, I must see the Doctor now, I must kiss my love now, or just simply, I must express my love now, you can take it or leave it, but I must express my heart.
I never can understand why women need the rest room as much as they do, but they do. when you are out at shopping mall, cinema or wherever, the ladies toilet always have the longest queue and the look on some of the women’s faces says it all. ‘I can only wait so long before things get undiginified around here!’ Phil Collins captures the mood so aptly in his song, ‘I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord‘. In the waiting room, we ‘feel it coming’ and we are doing all we can to stay sane, not to loose it, not to blurt out our unfeigned affection, not to defecate ourselves, not to run into the execution chamber, not to dip our hands in the priest’s meal, not to tip over into the ditch …. we can feel the suction of the ditch strongly pulling us in but we must wait! How hard it is in the waiting room? How difficult? Sometimes our restraint is non ending, we must hold back, wait forever, there are things we so badly need and want to say but decency and civility requires we must keep our mouths shut.
The waiting room is for the strong and as Phil Colins rightly sang, we sure need ‘Oh Lord’ as we can feel it coming and yes it comes ‘in the night’ the darkest period for us, when our resolve is low.
Beautiful Ivory 