Chapter 35: Isadora Duncan´s Past Life

\- Now I want you to feel comfortable and take off your shoes - she asked me, watching me lying on the couch in front of the window. I sat up to take off my shoes, and assuming the situation that I would be hypnotized, I took off my blue jeans jacket and was left only in my black dress. Two thin gold bracelets in the shape of stars suddenly seemed to weigh on my wrists. Now I only looked at the ceiling of the office while I felt the doctor's voice getting closer to me. - Hate and love fight each other Anastasia, the first to detach the libido from the subject, the second to isolate you from it. Hate and love are what oppose the rise to consciousness on the path of your purpose. You have to understand that it is the same energy only at opposite ends, hate is nothing more than love, so do not be alarmed if we talk about hate we talk about another kind of love. This path is closed because of your melancholic state. The traumatic events that you may have experienced with the object make you repress all feelings. When the burden of the threatened libido is finally removed from the object, it will not take refuge in your self, so the libido will stay with you, but you can understand that you have stopped feeling love towards the object at the moment of displacement, that is what I need to find. The solution lies in working with your memories of Paola.

\- Oh… I see – I said in a confused tone.

\- I want you to close your eyes Anastasia. Let yourself be guided by my voice. Together with my voice we will make a total reconstruction of your past life with the memories that are in the depths of your subconscious. You will allow my voice to guide you in this regression exercise. I want you to close your eyes on the count of three and let me enter your mind… one… two… and three. Eyes closed.

\- I want you to close your eyes Anastasia. Let yourself be guided by my voice. Together with my voice we will make a complete reconstruction of your past life with the memories that are deep in your subconscious. You will allow my voice to guide you in this regression exercise. I want you to close your eyes on the count of three and let me enter your mind… one… two… and three. Eyes closed.

The creaking of the wood resonated beneath my bare ankles. The room was warmly lit with the light that bounced off the mahogany walls and unanimously illuminated the entire room. A door on the floor with two wooden openings was exposed. I took one of the metal handles, placed on the floor, and pulled it up to open the door. A weak light rose from the bottom illuminating some stairs. I could clearly see the first step that descended beyond where my curiosity could not reach. I leaned towards the bottom, blinking, barely breathing through my mouth as if I was afraid to breathe or be discovered doing something wrong. I tilted my head, looking inward until my hair touched my ankles. I stood up and put one foot on the cold, cemented floor, then the other. Then I began to descend.

As I lightly moved my feet on the cold, smooth stairs, I felt a tobacco breath brush my cheek, and a lavender scent permeated me from some garden at the bottom of the stairs. I had left behind the black dress and slippers I had worn for the consultation that afternoon. Now in their place, I was wearing a white lace blouse and a red chiffon skirt. The stairs were straight and descended diagonally until they curved in the shape of a spiral. I felt like I had passed the limit of the room above many steps ago. My legs became lighter as I approached a dazzling light, naked in its absolute whiteness. Suddenly I discovered that I was no longer wearing the red skirt, now I was wearing only a white dress with a nice flow, very loose and comfortable. The rays of the sun filtered through the windows framed with Greek architecture, which wrapped around the walls and covered the descent. The light of day filtered through small slots that illuminated the floor and warmed my bare shoulders. The space became increasingly narrower until finally I was in front of the white light and I passed through it as if I were absorbed by it. I felt a sensation of well-being, a kind of white energy radiated from outside filling my muscles with life, my soft and smooth back, my shoulders, my chest and my legs filled with energy along with every pore of my skin. An intense tingling ran through my chest and I felt my body full of joviality, shining in its splendor, I lit up like a star in the endless night. My lips were filled with hundreds of crystals and my skin fully radiated a golden and diamond-like shine.

When I was on the other side of the light, whose source of illumination had completely disappeared behind me, I entered the living room of a large house. I walked between large furniture filled with pillows, all white, many brown and red cushions, and mustard-colored silk veils decorated the place. I felt my toes settle on the feel of the velvet that stretched out next to the carpet. I walked on a cream-colored carpet that took up the entire living room. I was still wearing the white dress with large ruffles, it was a Greek-style dress, held only by a garment that joined the fabric on my left shoulder and clung to my body. The dress was adorning me in perfect harmony with a tiara in my hair. My hair was wavy and full of starlight, covered by a mantle of frost. It kept its champagne-blond hue, and some loose strands fell like a silky curtain behind my shoulders. I walked anxiously back and forth waiting for someone, I tried to find out my name but I couldn't. I only knew that the anxiety accumulated in my body didn't allow me to stay still. I went out onto the balcony and the sound of the sea embraced me warmly. I stretched out my hands to feel the calm of the sea, along with the wind between my fingers. I could feel the foam covering the sand and the smell of salts mixing in my nose. As I looked at the sea, a smile curved on my face and I left behind all the worry for that person who hadn't arrived yet. I went back into the room and noticed that a baby grand piano was in the living room. Hidden between the curtains, it decorated two glass doors that led to another balcony. "Or was it a garden behind the curtains?" I didn't know for sure. She was a dancer, I knew it. I contemplated the image of the bright blue sea and I was certain that she was a dancer.

I walked through the furniture and the glass table looking for children, but I had no children, just the knowledge of not having children was in my mind. Not having children filled me with sadness. I felt empty, I didn't have them and I wouldn't have them again. A name came to my head. A name that I had never given importance to suddenly had a lot of meaning: Isadora. I was forced to leave that room and go back up the stairs. I didn't want to go up, not yet, I wanted that person I had been waiting for so long to arrive. Who was it? The sound of the sea resonated in the living room with a charming harmony, that place was like being at home, my home. I climbed the stairs heavily and left that room entering again into the light. I returned to the wooden attic with the door on the floor where I had started the descent. Now pink variegated lilies covered one of the wooden walls along with a small, thin green vine, they had bloomed in my absence. But the living room was just as before, completely empty and illuminated by the sun. The only sound was the wooden floor creaking with every step. Since I was a child, I felt incredibly attracted to rooms covered in wood. I used to go up to the attic of my grandparents' house in Venezuela just to sit with my back to the window and feel the sun warm my skin as I lay face down on the wooden floor. Now I understood why I liked to feel the sun and the smell of wood so much. That room was my soul's connection to past lives. My personal and secret place. Finally, I opened my eyes to the count of three, one, two, three. I found myself in Dr. Mercedes Pulido's office. Now the doctor looked more radiant, as did everything around her; the vision she had to observe reality was full of peace and vitality.

When Dr. Mercedes heard what she had seen during the regression, she knew instantly that it was about the life of Isadora Duncan. She had never heard of her before. Dr. Mercedes told me that she had been a famous contemporary dancer in the 1920s. Wary of the possibility that in my past life I could have been a famous dancer, Dr. Mercedes urged me to search on Google. She asked me to search on my cell phone for some data or clues that could help us locate her better. I, still doubtful, typed in the words Isadora, sea and piano, and to my surprise it was on Wikipedia. Isadora Duncan, American dancer living in Paris.

\- Wow! – I looked perplexed at the photograph of Isadora. She was a beautiful woman, really very beautiful.

\- You were Isadora Duncan, Anastasia, your soul is as sensitive and as wise as only art and pain can instruct a dancer who died centuries ago.

The dancer Isadora Duncan grew up influenced by the sound of the sea in her home in San Francisco. Years later she would define her dance as the free muse where every movement was guided by the sea. She wrote poems about dance and the movements of the sea. She grew up listening to the piano that her mother always played for her and her sister. She had a sister named Isabel. Many of those things were characteristic of me, the love of the piano and poetry. The movement of the sea captured me, the subtlety of dancing ballet and flamenco from a young age was part of who I was. Although I stopped dancing, the natural movement of my free body was something I enjoyed feeling fully.

Isadora Duncan was bisexual. She became an alcoholic after losing her two children in a car accident. The car fell into the Seine River in Paris and her children, Patrick and Deirdre, drowned. Isadora dedicated her life to dance and years after losing her children she married a Russian poet. She strongly supported communism and sympathized with the Soviet Union. For which she was harshly criticized when she returned to the United States after the fall of the old regime. After countless public scandals, she divorced her husband and returned to Paris. She lived a joyful, libertine, and often bordering on scandalous life, surrounded by her friends, she enjoyed luxurious parties and pleasant trips. She died tragically, suffocated at the age of 50 because of a scarf that got tangled in the engine of the car she was traveling in. I remembered that strange fear I used to have when I wrapped silk scarves around my neck. I could use woven ones or gabardine ones, but whenever I wrapped a thin cloth around my neck I felt that anxiety that I was short of breath. The last time I felt it was in Melissa's car, that time in the hospital parking lot. If that was true and in my other life I had been Isadora Duncan, perhaps my tendency to feel everything too much would make a lot of sense. I also read that Isadora died in that car accident because she was looking for a French man she was attracted to. Apparently, in my old life at 50 I was just as horny as I am now, giving meaning to my destiny only through art and the passion of feeling myself in the arms of a lover. I was surprised and somewhat proud that my biography appeared on Wikipedia, also disappointed to see the tragic life I had led in contrast to my artistic life dedicated to dance. Isadora had affairs with French poets, and artists dedicated to fashion and literature. Maybe she had been Isadora Duncan, or maybe it was a coincidence that I had seen all that and that I coincided exactly with that dancer of whom I knew nothing until that day. I don't know, I will never know. But from that day on I would think that in my other life I was a dancer dedicated to art called Isadora Duncan, and that I shone brightly like a star from several previous lives.

However, knowing that did not help us to understand the main problem, and the reason for my consultation: my state of melancholy. The doctor said that being bisexual for years and having suffered terrible losses like those of my children, predisposed me, from the beginning, to carry certain traumas deep within me. This caused the depth of my feelings. There was no trace of Paola in that regression, and I needed to work on my feelings towards Paola.

\-         However, knowing that did not lead us into the main problem, and the reason for my consultation: my state of melancholy. The doctor said that being bisexual for years and having suffered terrible losses like that of my children, predisposed me, from the beginning, to carry certain traumas deep within me. Which caused the depth of my feelings. There was no trace of Paola in that regression, and I needed to work on my feelings towards Paola.

I could not assume that she had been one of those girlfriends that Isadora Durcan had because even Paola could have been a man in another life. Nor could I be sure that she was in my other life. I reviewed the biographies of a few girlfriends from the French dancer's past and there was a writer called Mercedes de Acosta who had great affairs with extremely beautiful actresses. There was an Eleonore who looked like a strong lesbian even in the time of the last century. I wondered which of my ex-girlfriends could have been that Eleonore. I enjoyed imagining my old loves from a possible past life. Isadora had a friend who wrote a biography about her called: Isadora an intimate portrait. While other poetesses would call her “Isadora, the dancer of pain” apparently suffering for centuries past had been my way of life, not counting the numerous male and female lovers I had as Isadora Duncan.

Isadora Duncan had two books, an autobiography called “My Life” written in French and another called “Isadora the dancer of the sea”, it even had a film adaptation by director Karel Reisz, a film that I promised myself to watch with Melisa that night. I was curious about her past love life, although I had no interest in studying Isadora Duncan, if after all I had been her I did not need to relive the past.