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Hauser- Pirates of the Caribbean
Joaquin raised his bow once more, but the knocking from the basement threw him off his rhythm again, even locked up, this man still had to dictate how others spent their evenings. The sleeping pill was taking its time, and Joaquin had resolved not to go downstairs again… at least not in this frame of mind. Breathe in slowly… acknowledge the anger without judging it. That’s how it had been explained to him. He was supposed to take a moment between a feeling and his reaction to it… so that not everyone who annoyed him would immediately feel the consequences. Well… today he was practicing this under difficult conditions. He closed his eyes briefly and tried to connect with his inner child... what did it need right now? Peace and quiet! Apparently, just like him, it simply wanted to be left alone… at least that made things clear. “I hear you,” he muttered, though it wasn’t entirely clear which of the two he was referring to. Then he played a little louder, and another blow rang out against the door. “Yep… you have needs… so do I.” He drew the bow back across the strings. “Mine right now would be for you to shut the hell up.” That hadn’t been very mindful… but at least he’d voiced his feelings.
His therapist wanted him to stop bottling everything up, after all. He was supposed to use mindfulness to make his inner child happy, because apparently he’d had to go without a lot of things as a child, which was true… the only problem was, it was hard to simply breathe away something as dangerous as this guy sitting in his basement. Lately, more and more unforeseen events had been getting in his way, and yet it had all started so innocently.
Actually, he’d only been trying to get his personal life back under control… though his ex-wife would probably have argued that he needed to have one to begin with. At some point, his daughter had stopped asking him if he’d be staying for dinner... now she tended to ask when Esteban would call. Most of the time, her guess was pretty spot-on. And then there was the man with whom he actually wanted to build a life… who asked him one evening if there was even a part of him that his client hadn’t bought. An uncomfortable question... especially since Joaquin couldn’t come up with a particularly convincing answer, and he usually had an answer for everything… really, everything! Now, on the topic of mindfulness… setting boundaries, nurturing the inner child… apparently he’d had to turn 50 to find someone else to take care of. He’d agreed to this special weekend at the coast, and then Vial had shown up… his client… a sleazy, dangerous guy who, however, paid well and presented a challenge… naturally with a problem that brooked no delay… his problems generally had better working conditions than Joaquin’s family. What happened afterward had at least ensured that Vial would never call him at night again. Joaquin might describe it this way… he’d finally drawn a line, and unfortunately, Vial hadn’t survived it. All that remained of him was a thriving business, a few extremely high-profile but dangerous acquaintances, and his remains… Joaquin had to take care of everything himself once again. Even in death, this man was still delegating…
Unfortunately, the big boss had left behind employees, business partners, and a lab. Joaquin had taken care of it… first as a lawyer, then as a lawyer representing his clients in his absence, then as a lawyer who used his severed thumb tips to unlock safes and the like and seal letters with a stamp… and in the end, he was, in a sense, sitting in the boss’s chair himself, stuck with the company on his hands, and had become the right-hand man of a dead man… whom he… had, of course, also severed.
His ex-wife had always accused him of bringing work home... it was annoying how long some people remained right. And now the next influential gentleman was sitting in his basement, for whom he had to come up with something. His ex-wife had always accused him of bringing work home with him. It was annoying how long some people remained right… but it was even more annoying that he paid his therapist as much each month as he would for a small car, and in moments like these, he was still toying with the idea of committing another murder… even though his inner child had absolutely no desire to do so. He hadn’t even managed to bring his own being into harmony yet, and in the last session, that very therapist had hinted that he should now get to know all his other facets as well, the annoyed Joaquin, the self-confident Joaquin… the workaholic, and so on and so forth… if all these character traits were to start talking to him, too… then mindfulness would certainly no longer get through to him.
Nope… he didn’t need to deal with all the different Joaquins right now. For the moment, the one sitting here trying to play the cello was enough. He loosened his fingers around the bow, let his shoulders drop, and breathed in slowly… then out. The knocking was a sound… just a sound… he didn’t have to react to it... even if the sound clearly would have loved for him to react. He started again, this time more focused… a little louder, but more focused. He managed to play an entire passage without his mind wandering back to the basement. And eventually, the knocking actually stopped. He played a few more measures before realizing how pleasant the silence was. Well, there you go… maybe he just needed to give the exercises a little more time. Then the doorbell rang… he paused, waited… took a breath, it rang again. When Joaquin finally opened the door, two police officers were standing there. A complaint about the loud music… could he please turn it down?
“Of course,” he replied after a quick glance at their uniforms. “I was just about to stop anyway...” His inner child wanted to flip them off and slam the door shut... for the first time that evening, they were in complete agreement…