2005-05-08
Antique Afternoon Philarmonic
It was a wonderful, 8 a.m. morning, in which I was still dreaming with the remnants of thoughts that remained from the previous night. I kept thinking of Al, for some reason.
The phone rings, and I almost don't answer, thinking it may be one of my dad's clients.
It was Al, calling early in the morning--calling for my mom to wish her a happy Mother's Day--he was the first one today to do that.
I handed the phone over to my mom, still half-asleep and confused, and she smiled a brilliant smile and laughed and said: "Thanks! You are wonderful, Al!"
She handed me the phone afterwards and smiled and mumbled, "I can't believe you forgot...and he didn't."
I started talking to him about the final plans for prom: dinner at Bacco's Ristorante Italiano, on Main Street, where Aaron and his date will meet up with us. Then, off to prom.
Yesterday I was able to take the dress from the tailor's. It's a beautiful dress and I may just be tempted enough to post pictures sometime--it's that beautiful. It's designed by me.
To find the jewelry, I had to go shopping at several antique shops yesterday, but I finally found earrings and the necklace.
Next Saturday are my hair and make-up appointments. Sometime mid-week are my other hair appointments, of which I will give no further detail.
I'm sitting at my desk, finishing up Calculus homework that I've been meaning to make up, and the memories of long ago continue to float up. They've been re-surfacing all day and creeping back into my heart like petroleum seeping through desert-dry sand (what?).
Tomorrow is my first reading in front several people (including the enigmatic Dr. Schleiffer), to whom I will present my "Hamlet Novel"--whatever it is. I don't tend to title things. I understand that giving titles to things is important, and sometimes, even sums up the piece or gives light into the theme or...whatever. But generally and usually, I don't title the things I write. I'm far too occupied in creating and making certain that what I need to say is said, instead of titling the damned thing. So as a cop-out title, I chose "Elsinore", it's something for which I should be severely beaten and punished, but I was going through issues at the moment...
Thoughts and feelings are antique, on this very afternoon. I'm having moments where I know that I've seen this long before in some place that existed long ago...but I can't recall. I hear the crickets of the late, suffocatingly sweet afternoon, and I want to go back to that one particular place.
I would say near the ocean, but in giving the thought further entertainment, I know that's not where I truly want to end up.
I took with me the late afternoons in which the sound of horse hooves floated behind my ears, in the distant. Here, the afternoon smell is orange blossoms. Over there, where I'm from, it's sugar. The sugar from sugarcanes in the late afternoon, creeping--like snails--out of the factory.
There's the sound of rocks that twink and twank and cruck and crack on the unpaved road. I forget that this is where I am really from. There are...Che Guevara posters and white letters of Venceremos on fences.
Chickens, horses, and old sugarcane plantations. The ones that survived from long ago when the Spaniards lived there.
So what happened? I couldn't even tell you, for I was born amidst the fading glimmer of that once-promising Revolution.
I could care less about a Revolution. I care about my afternoons and the images and thoughts and moments that were burned into me, all in that place.
I care about the shades and hues of the sun's light at it sinks into the grass and sunflower leaves outside my window. God, it stirs the soul, to be out of one's country.