Conversations For Transformation: Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More




Farm Girl

Napa Valley, California, USA

March 26, 2011



"Who Werner Erhard is for me is the space in which the love of my life shows up." ... Laurence Platt

This essay, Farm Girl, is the fifth in a group of nine on Passion: It is also the prequel to The Girl Who Became A Tree.

It was written at the same time as


I turn the corner to join the line waiting for fish 'n chips. Moving too fast, I bump into her, knocking her clipboard out of her grasp. "I'm sorry" I say, reaching down to pick it up and put it back into her hands. That's when I really see her face for the first time. Her hair is elegantly cut shorter than I've ever seen on a girl. Her eyes drill  mine. It's instantaneous. "I love you" I think to her. "I adore  you" she says to me later.

It's her innocence. It's her generosity. Her natural gift is sharing herself. This is long before I've ever heard the term sharing myself. She's ahead of her time, waaay  ahead of her time - in so many ways. We sit watching the passing show. We walk hand in hand down avenues. We're not walking so we can go anywhere. We're walking so we can hold hands. We talk. She speaks. I listen. I speak. She listens. Hours go by. The sound of her voice vibrates in my ears with a resonance so sweet, so pleasing I never want her to stop speaking.

She teaches me how to make love. Not the physical part. Our bodies already know how to do that. That program is embedded in the machinery. What she teaches me ie what she leads me to in our dance together isn't the deliciousness of our bodies together but rather the deliciousness of who we are  as human beings together, with physicality. And in order to really be  with each other, our bodies surely have to merge. I can't get enough of her. I can't get enough of her not getting enough of me. I want to breathe her in. I want to inhale  her as she inhales me. When we sleep in each other's arms, lips to lips, nose to nose, she breathes out as I breathe in, I breathe out as she breathes in. It doesn't work any other way. Sometimes I'm asleep when she finds me in the evening crashed out  on the couch after my day's work. She wakes me gently. I can smell her deliciousness even before I open my eyes. I wrap my arms around her and hold her, gently rocking both of us with the sheer joy of it. "En nou?"  she says tersely (that's Afrikaans for "And now?", pronounced "Enn - like the letter 'N' - know"), feigning seriousness. "May we please make love?" I ask, wanting her so much. "Of course" she says.

We fall asleep, not realizing we've left the radio on. In the middle of the night something wakes me. She's in my arms, her exquisite face nestling into my neck. Over the radio comes The 5th Dimension  seguing from Aquarius  to Let The Sunshine In. It's the trumpet's clarion call which has woken me, heralding the start of a new age. And in this moment I now know forever what it's like to be deeply, passionately, vibrantly, breathlessly, thrillingly  in love. My life will never be the same again - thanks to her.

The way she visits me in my dreams is otherworldly. I've never known anything like it before. I've never known anything like it since. I never know ahead of time if I'm going to dream about her - as I know ahead of time if I'm going to dream about other people, places, and events. When she comes to me in my dreams, I find her waiting there  for me. It's always a certain kind of dream she appears in. She's there in the best  places. She's there when I'm dreaming I'm experiencing deep love. She's there when I'm dreaming I'm experiencing validation. She's there when I'm dreaming I'm experiencing triumph. She's there when I'm dreaming I'm childlike and innocent - we're babes in the wood. And sometimes when I'm sleeping alone in sultry summer nights and I'm hot, she's there in those dreams too.

I've traveled. A lot. I'm probably the only person you'll ever know who at one time or another has held the local version of what these United States call a green card  from five different countries. That's how far I've traveled and how long I've stayed in the places I've visited. It doesn't really work for me to be away from her. Yet I'm pulled  to go toward my destiny. But even when I travel I find her in the most unexpected places.

Watching a movie alone one afternoon in le Quartier Latin  of Paris France, there she is  on the screen. No really!  There she is. Not in my wishful thinking. Not in my fantasy. It's really her! I leave the theatre, averting my eyes so the other patrons won't see the tears welling up.

I'm stranded on a desert island in Fiji. To be sure, it's a great place to be stranded. If you've ever seen photographs taken from the air of stranded people who've laid out rocks and pieces of anything they can lay their hands on to spell out "H  ... E  ... L  ... P"  or "S  ... O  ... S"  so a searching aircraft can see them from above, you'll know what I do next. I'm naked on the beach - both spiritually and physically. I collect as many rocks and pieces of anything I can lay my hands on, on that tropical paradise lagoon beach, and I arrange them to spell her name in enormous letters so big I want them to be seen from outer space. It takes me all day. When the sunset comes I'm pleased with my work. Soon the high tide will erase it. But I don't want to be around to watch it happen. As I leave the beach I cover my footprints and get rid of any evidence I was there. All I leave on that tropical paradise lagoon beach is her name - visible from outer space.

Over the years we drift apart, we come together again, we drift apart, we come together again. With many years between each encounter, we have four distinct passionate affairs ... "I love you"  / "I adore you"  ... in which the stages keep changing but the song remains the same. We're under the radar. It's our world ... in which everyone else gets to play but only if we allow them to. If we ever let go of each other's hands, it's only to let a few years to go by so we can grow a bit more, and then hold hands again, just groovin'  along together ... oblivious to any world other than our own.

Somehow, impossibly  it sometimes seems in retrospect, I get married to someone else during one of our non-affair friend  episodes. I show her the engagement ring I've designed and had made. I ask her if she likes it. She does. I can tell. She says so. Then her eyes drill mine and she says "It should be for me.".

Indeed she may have been right. However fate, as it turns out, has other things in mind for both of us, and eventually we each follow the beat of different drummers - entirely  different drummers. I never set eyes on her again.

* * *

That doesn't seem to do much to stop her. She still finds her way back - again and again and again into my hot sultry summer nights dreams. And when I hold her, when I smell her deliciousness again, she turns her face toward mine and says "En nou?".



Communication Promise E-Mail | Home

© Laurence Platt - 2011 through 2023 Permission