Hee! I love Björk! Hee hee! I love Telegram. Whenever I listen to it, I feel great. Perhaps to say that it makes me euphoric is not an exaggeration but a truth.
It has been the soundtrack to moments of timidity and rage. Ah but those instances of rage have been the best! From the chase up the stairs in Xanadu, to the shirt-pulling, stomach-scratching, fist-clenching tango performed on the top floor to the sweltering fire consuming the cheeks upon being declared an angel of fifteen upon entering the building.
– Would you like some tiramisu? it’s quite delicious. – I don’t know what that is. – Surely you jest. – No. I am serious. I just had sushi for the first time last week! – Oh dear! Here, try some tiramisu then. – No. I’m sorry but I’m upset with you. – Why? What did I do
[pinching of cheeks] – Stop! You said that I am fifteen when I’m eighteen! – Oh that, but it’s true, you look fifteen my dear! – Nonsense. And please, don’t pinch my cheeks. – Ah! Ah you little cherubin!
I suspect that rather than progressing further east, I should return to California. California is my home, I know its history. California is who I am.
But it’s late now. I will go on with what’s been already decided. Upon abandoning History for the Classics, a character on one of those fancy Exxol-Mobil Masterpiece Theatre series cried, “Surely, there must be more to life than studying the Classics!” I swallowd my saliva but with such diffulty. Bitterness infested the tip of my tongue, spilling into my mouth. What a bad taste it left. Yet, two weeks later, I had set sail for the landlocked port. And here I … was. A new port awaits, and this one, is actually next to the water!
The first time I flew into the airport in Baltimore, I was amazed by what I saw from my window. Such effulgent verdure! “Hydor! Hydor!” I screamed within my heart. The slightest amount, however insignificant, of water was able to make me swoon.
Soon, I will revisit this experience, and perhaps this time around it shall be different. Time will tell, does it not always? however harsh it turns out to be.
Yet, some time remains before the move and the renewal of my studies – I am scared! What few weeks remain are escaping my grasp! Time!
So, for now, I will reflect on my California. I am becoming such a romantic … again. But this time not intoxicated by the fatalism.
I miss playing hide and seek in the History Department. The pushing and the heavy breathing, the running and screams. “I see you!” “Yeah? Catch me first.” Such childishness. And our worn-out and tired bodies marched out after a while, to be cooled by the soft rain drops escaping from the dark sky. Then we’d march back to this-dorm-or-that-dorm where the games would continue.
I miss these days. And I also miss the nights of restless sleep with Telegram humming in the background, almost but not successfully drowned out by the conversations accompanied by the gesticulations – bare arms jutting into the dark room. But most of all, I miss the endless occular conversations. Never has browness obtained such sweetness or brilliancy.
Gad, I should come out and say it, reveal what this entry’s about, because it is a quiet and all-to-me homage to one person; it speaks without speaking, it reveals without revealing. But if you know anything, anything about the real me, the Palo Alto me … then the name needs not be mentioned.
The now-expiring me, the Santa Fe me, is not the real. Place me in a location congenial to my very being and I grow, I become more positive and idealistic. I am an orchid transplanted from the pleasant Mediterranean airs of the West to the dry and bright skies of the Southwest. How silly, I never took into account my nature. But mistakes are part of life, and now I am raising myself.