My next project, after this blog, therapy, and working on my uncompleted projects from the end of my failed semester at Georgetown, will be musical. I hope to prepare some musical works and, should the project proceed well enough, I will be adding a youtube page to my repertoire of internet pages. By the end of the year I should be just about caught up with the culture of 2006. Wink.
Barcelona. Originally composed October 22, 2006
“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” The Beatles
One of the last things he ever heard her say was at the very eve of the night. Not because it was ending, giving way to day, but rather because it was ending as a social construction, the two were preparing to part company. In a few hours the girl would be on a plane to France and the boy would remain with his friends for one more day in Spain. He would spend that day very much alone. But it was not quite over yet. She turned to him and asked, in regard to a comment he had made some great while earlier, “Are you happy?” This is what the boy said: “There is an awareness, somewhere in my mind of an appreciation for life. In the ephemeral, day to day sense of living, blind to the future and negligent of the past, I often find myself unhappy with living. There is a stark reality to life that no one can deny in the context of the here and now. And yet, every once in awhile, I stumble upon an event or a person in my life and it reaches into me and shows me that appreciation I had forgotten I had. And it is in those places, with those people that I remember that I am happy. I am happy with who I am and where I am. I am happy that I am the person that I am. I am proud of my accomplishments, my actions, and my ideas. I am happy with my experiences and my wisdom, for what it is. I am happy that I have been successful enough to survive for nearly two decades and that my successes have amounted to sitting on a beach in Barcelona with my feet buried in the sand and my eyes looking up at the stars.” Lara smiled as if to say “Me too.” A moment later, she looked back at the boy and, as if there had never been a pause in the conversation said, “And your failures?” He smiled knowingly, in that way he used to smile knowingly and he said, “I’m happy…” He paused a second, screwed up his face as he groped for the word he was looking for, “I’m happy that they have not kept me down.”
It was later than two o’clock that morning the two of them parted ways. Time had taken up arms against them and forced their departure to take prominence in the mind of the world. It cared little for the short peace, the joy that bubbled and blossomed somewhere on a beach in Barcelona and refused to give in to these two youngsters who merely wanted to exist and be completely free forever. All they wanted was to be heroes, heroes in that definition Lara had told the boy and which he would take up as his own that very same night. But that, it would seem, was too much for the world to allow and so it turned nonetheless and the hours passed until it ordered them away.
They said their goodbyes in a small section of pavement apart from the beach but near the docks. In the background was a large metal sculpture of what may very well have been some kind of lobster. The boy handed her a piece of paper, a receipt actually, from one of his pockets and turned around. She wrote out on this paper her email address, using his back as a support. When she was finished, the boy turned around again and they looked at each other, knowing what this meant. He went first, “Goodbye Lara. It was a pleasure to know you.” They hugged as old friends. “Goodbye.” Lara said. She did not laugh and the boy did not smile. His friends waited for him further down the street, she waved at them and they waved back. The two were silent for a brief moment longer and in his mind the boy wanted to smile. Instead he turned away and walked west, down a long alley and into nothingness. He did not turn to watch her leave.
This was a story that may or may not have happened. Much the way anything may or may not happen. It may have happened already, it may happen soon, it may be a complete fabrication of an overzealous mind. There is a Canadian girl named Lara who is now somewhere in France. There was also a boy who spent a Friday night on a Spanish beach. They are two completely separate and moving lives that may, for the briefest of tangents, have converged, an event as rare as two comets flashing through deep space, passing for the briefest moments and recognizing themselves in the other. Regardless, it was a story and as such it retains little more validity than a dream. And like a dream, it hopefully led to a very real destination.
Fin
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