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Saturday, January 16, 2010

Please Accept This Story As A Token Of My Apologies

I apologize for my absence this week, it really has been my attempt to post relatively frequently on this blog. I’m notoriously bad at updating blogs and as soon as I let myself slip even the slightest bit I know that this whole thing will go to hell. I’d very much like to avoid that.
I haven’t been feeling well recently and that’s why I haven’t been posting. My depression, though improved, seems to be getting worse again. I suffer a complete lack of motivation for even the most basic functions of life, hence the not blogging. Is blogging a basic function of life? Well, I’d say it’s at least a tertiary function. My sleep the last week or so has been truly awful. I get no actual rest from my sleep and my dreams are becoming more vivid and more upsetting. If dreams are a way of looking into one’s mind then let’s just say that my mind should be closed off forever like the warehouse at the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. I just made an Indiana Jones reference. That’s a bad sign.
At any rate, I don’t know when I’ll be healthy enough to start doing proper blogs again so in the meantime I’ve decided to post my award winning story Barcelona in parts over the next few days. I wrote this immediately after my trip to Barcelona, Spain in October 2006. I will accompany it with a few of my photos of the city taken during that same trip. Please enjoy. And, if you read this, please do comment so I know that people are reading.


Barcelona. Originally composed October 22, 2006
“Surely even those immune from the world, for the time being, need the touch of one another, or all is lost.” Eudora Welty.
The following was inspired by a true story. The majority of the dialogue is real or as real as my memory will allow. Some of it has been paraphrased by the siphons of my mind and such losses must be expected. The people may or may not be entirely real. Because they are used in this narrative as little more than vessels for the non-fictional dialogue, their own realities are hardly of relevance. The action, for what it is, is fictional in the sense that none of what we do is real. If it is not the present, if it is not this instant in which we are currently living is it even true anymore? Or is it merely inspired?
Her name was Lara. Lara without a “u” he would later tell people. He made her laugh, she made him smile. For what it was it was something. The boy had been looking at her now for about seven hours. At the bus stop, he remarked to himself about this girl who stood next to him. Together they waited to leave the Eternal City. They avoided eye contact. Still, he took note of the “Led Zeppelin” patch pinned to her full black backpack. Next to it was pinned a small Canadian flag. Walking through security at the airport she stood apart from him, a score or more of people separating the boy from his new fascination. Nonetheless when they met at a convergence in the lines he gave her a knowing nod and she smiled back.
It was not until they reached the tarmac, walking those narrow metal steps into a plane that they made contact again. The plane was decadent in blue and gold. Colors intended to look splendid, one would assume, during the day now looked all the more lonely and desperate by the fierce night and the outburst of rain that had suddenly started. For the first time he spoke to her, “It seems to be raining on our parade.” Though rain fell in thick sheets, his humor would remain dry. “Its not a parade,” she remarked back. “It would be if we were marching,” he said. She laughed.

She told him her name was Lara. Lara without a “u” she said. The boy told her his name. They were both pleased to meet each other. Two hours later they sat next to each other on a bus driving through a dead city. Dead only in the way that metropolitan cities can be at one o’clock in the morning. Neon luminescence shone on her face through the bus window; making her dark skin shimmer with unnatural shades of blue, green, and red. They were remarkably alive for the dead hour as they rode on a bus, quiet as the dead, through that colorful, dead city.
She was Canadian. He told her he was hardly surprised, then commented upon her backpack, its red and white patch strangely lit up as she held it nurturingly on her lap. He made a remark, it may have been disparaging, about Canada and she laughed. He asked if they had money in Canada. She told him no, they only use maple leaves as crude sorts of checks. He smiled. They spoke of many things. At one time it reached Canadian politics and the boy impressed her with an understanding of its geo-political landscape. He was only half-lying too. Later they made fun of America together. She laughed and he closed his eyes, shook his head sadly and smiled.

Almost 24 hours later they walked alone down a beachside street, lined on one side with shops and restaurants, most darkened and closed up by this hour. They were in charge of finding drinks and bringing them back for the group of students that stood waiting amicably on the beach. The other side of the street was sand. They walked in the sand. She wore brown shoes without laces that kicked up sand with every step. The boy walked barefoot. He held two black dress shoes in his hand, the socks stuffed inside a pocket of his jacket to keep them clean for the walk home when there would not be the comfort of the sand to protect his feet. As they walked the two laughed and joked about the ridiculousness of capitalist theory. As they walked he explained to her the difference between an awkward silence and an awkward stillness. He explained to her that they were both of them detrimental to the soul and that the ability to properly stand silent with another person was a reflection of comfort and serenity. She explained to him the euphoric uses of crying and the means of achieving a properly balanced soul. He spoke to her of the last time he had cried. They walked on for some time in silence. The boy smiled.

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