Clarification?

Ummm...it seems many people have been unable to make sense of the previous post, I guess a trainer is required...

Paragraphs 1, 3, 5 (and the last line) are conversations between the protagonist and random women.
Paragraphs 2, 4, 6 are conversations between the protagonist and the love of his life - the bride (best friend, ex girlfriend, your choice).

Hope this helps...

Incidents

Conversations

"Excuse me? Yes, could I get a Corona please..."
"Aah yes I'm new in town, looking for places to hang out...by the by, you really have beautiful eyes..."
"I am but a speaker of the truth mademoiselle...so what else is there to do in this town?"
"Oh really? Well then I must check this place out on the weekend...and hopefully see you again?"
"I must confess I've never really heard anyone say 'lol' out loud before...I'm sure people must find it very endearing..."

"Hey hon...just got back from the office..."
"Of course I wish you were here...Dare I say lets elope? I know your mom already approves..."
"I'm kidding, I'm kidding..."
"I agree, we should catch up more often...maybe I'll fly down this fall..."
"Yes ma'am, I'll try not to disappear completely from now on..."

"I'm sorry, I couldnt hear you! The music seems uncomfortably loud..."
"Would I like to get you a beer? Ummm, ok..."
"Careful there, you dont want to fall..."
"Rest assured, I'm not a 'player' as you claim I might be, let me go see if some of your friends are in better shape to take care of you..."

"Hello? Hey...I'm sorry, I couldn't hear the phone ring, its obnoxiously loud inside..."
"Of course not, I always have time for you..."
"You had another fight? Babes, you're going to get married soon...yes, I'll talk to him and get back to you...dont worry, I'll take care of this..."
"Hey...yes he's calm , now please go make up...and you call me if anything!"
"Love you too...I'll always be there..."

"May I have the pleasure of this dance?"
"Oh, just old friends with the bride, nothing more..."
"You're quite right, its surprising how weddings bring out the romance in people...time is short, we should always be making the most of it..."
"Do excuse me, I think I have to be somewhere else right now..."

"As long as I've known, you've completed me...you've been the ripples in my heart, keeping me whole when I ought to have drifted away into myself, into obscurity...rain washing away my scars, breathing into me new chances and old love...you're my favorite girl, my beautiful distraction, my angel...I've never known peace till I found you, and maybe I'll never know love since, and if I could stop but a grain of time it would be enough...to show you the stars in my soul, to tell you the clichés of my love, to be together forever and a day...all I ask is that..."
"Oh hey, didnt see you there..."
"Hehe, no wasnt speaking to myself, just thinking out loud..."
"Looking for you? Aah yes, I wanted to tell you something...you look so beautiful tonight by the way, you take my breath away..."
"Just that I love you, and I'll always be there..."

"Excuse me? Yes, could I get a Corona please...by the by, you have beautiful eyes..."



Many thanks to Francis Dunnery for Good Life

Incidents

The Beach

The bike whips through shadowed roads, and with each curve are those arms around him...not holding but trusting, soft as the waves that trail his left, beautiful as the spring to the right. He parks by the shore as she hops and skips her way into the water, making god's impressions in the warm sand, and he smiles to himself. Afraid as always of the fragility of emotion and the sting of circumstance, he's amazed at how the veil of happiness is always whole, perfect, unlike its counterpart that always makes space for a ray of hope...she beckons to him and he jogs in after her, putting off perspective for a lonelier day...

"This way now, and keep your eyes closed"...he guides her along the beach, letting the sleepy water make moments with their naked feet, almost there now. She's wearing a sleeveless red dress and looking like an angel's song. He cues the music and takes off her blindfold, the candles and table-for-two looking just right. She weakens a little and he scoops his darling up in his arms, carrying her to the chair and the wine as she whispers into his ear, "You remembered my dream"...

The music plays on softly as they dance in the sand, entwined in abandon and enchanted by the pure sky...a tête à tête in the midst of chaos, a stolen minute against fate, a divine moment amongst atheists. Her fingertips trace the outline of his palms and he holds her tenderly, her feet on his feet, her arms around his neck...her life with his. For tonight there is no reality, there are no others, they are under the stars and the night is beautiful...

She looks up at him now, hesitant to break back into actuality, and he knows what she wants to ask..."We don't have to go back tomorrow" he says, "we don't have to go back ever. I've booked you out of the hospital, and I've taken indefinite leave. We're going to stay here by the water and live each day, just live it, until its time...". Her eyes drop silken tears onto his shoulder as they make god's impressions in the sand, the sleepy water making moments with their naked feet. For tonight nothing matters, they are under the stars and the night is beautiful...she's wearing a red dress and looking like an angel's song...

Incidents

Her

The phone jolts him out of confused slumber, and his social reluctance is apparent as he picks up the call. Planning on monosyllables, he is pleasantly astonished to hear her voice. The lilting flow brings back memories of those days, those moments, those eyes...he's jerked back to the present with her question. "Of course I'm still in New York" he answers, "how does Saturday sound? I'll show you the sights and sounds, we'll make a day of it..." He hangs up and falls back on the pillow, wondering how after ten years she can still make his heart skip a beat...

"Of all the things I knew you for, shopping is a talent I had no idea about" she says as she skips down the aisle. As he guides her through the throngs at the mall, he recalls what infatuated him all those years ago and smiles to himself. She pulls him into another store, and he helps her decide handbag colors and boot styles as they joke about personal choices of lingerie. "This is amazing!" she exclaims, "I'm having the best time ever"...

Her fingers in the wind and her hair like wine, they drive through mountain roads along the river, making their way to nowhere. The roof is down and so are his walls, a haze of euphoria and a pinch of nostalgia. She hums along with Bruce Springsteen and gazes into the horizon, and he cant take his eyes off of her. Under the autumn leaves and evening sun his heart melts once more, walking down old alleys and familiar mistakes...

He hands her the glass of champagne and sits down beside her, for a while in quiet moonlight and comfortable silences. They watch the dusty stars and make new conversation, intertwined in flitting touches and duets. They talk about college days and busy lives, cities and relationships, his lack-of-commitment and her upcoming marriage. He tucks her into bed and lays down on the couch, wide awake in disorder and heartache...

They walk towards the counter and check her luggage in, making small talk with muffins on the side. "Thank you for such an amazing time" she says, "NY wouldnt have been this much fun without you". He smiles and hands her her plane ticket, and with a quick hug he walks away, not daring to look back...his mind knotted in old memories and new ones, final goodbyes and tears, bygones and incidents...his heart broken again...

Incidents

Ego

And you're telling me this today...", his anger is cold as he manipulates the Mustang around traffic lights and New York minutes. He can see she's apologetic as she begins to explain, "Honey please try and..." but he cuts her and a Volkswagen off simultaneously. "Please do not 'honey' me, its demeaning." She's a little taken aback at his response, but she knows this is all she'll get for a while. His anger is patient and volatile...and always painful. But her decision depended on his silence and his fury...his penetrating gaze and his ability to dissuade her knotted in the dance between the heart and the mind...

He makes the left turn towards JFK, mute with emotion and analysis. His walls are up and he's already questioning commitment and signs...his hope against pride, distance against month-long relationships. He pulls up in front of the terminal and drops her off, driving into the horizon pock-marked with planes, a quick and frosty goodbye...she, silhouetted against the evening tarmac glow...him, bundled up in November fog and rising temper...

Amber signals and road blocks toying with his restlessness, he gets on the highway, preoccupied with all that he should have said, and all that he didnt. 4 am conversations and romantic movies weighed against lonely comfortabilities and the ego, the battle wrapped in familiarity. His mind becomes clouded with the moments flitting by, each an impulse of his time, and the Mustang gathers speed to match thought. He wages the silent war inside, nanoseconds unto eternity, and he almost doesnt see the truck driver veer into his lane, just another nobody trying to get home amidst nachos and radio stations...

She hears the last call over the intercom and knows its time to board. She's waited three hours for the damn phone to ring, pride allowing her only the dignity of checking voice mail every ten minutes. Now as the last few minutes go by, a rushed past and a disordered present collide over and over in an attempt to make sense and reason, and she loses patience. She switches off the phone and walks away, making a silent promise not to weaken, not to make that first call...

Incidents

Memories

She ambles at a deliberate pace, slowed by time and arthritis. What used to be ten minutes is now an arduous battle against nature and gravity, and these last few minutes of uphill crawl are particularly excruciating. But she takes warmth from the sunlight and patience from memories, the doors to the library almost within grasp. All around her are streaming swarms of people, seemingly moving at hyper-speed in a bid to steer around her, lost in isolated bubbles of thought and emotion. She can barely catch a glimpse before they're gone through the doors in a puff of importance and hurry.

It really is a beautiful day she thinks to herself, easing her mind away from the cramping joints. The lazy sun and cracked pavement take her back almost 50 years - to flowery dresses and red lipstick, to park benches and Oldsmobiles...to Frank. Across the candlelit table with flowers, grinning through the windshield with the kids tucked in the back, a bear hug for everytime she felt sad. He had held her hand through 40 years of bliss, right until the moment she found herself staring at his coffin and a tear in a white napkin. Frank, lugging the boxes across the hall as he reprimanded her, "A lady like you should never have to do grunt work". Frank, waiting patiently in the car while she finished gossiping after sewing class, "A lady like you should never have to walk alone". Frank, surprising her with vacations and white wine, "A lady like you should always be smiling". Frank...

Her reverie is broken as rock music brushes past her. He looks to be about 21 and in definitive haste, trying to sort out stock market rates and birthday gift ideas all in the minute to the elevator. He passes her and heads for the door, glancing back at her measured gait and wistful eyes, and he slows down. He hold the library doors open and waits patiently as she makes the last few steps past him. She turns to thank him for the moment of kindness in a sea of impatience, an act that defies human emotion and lives up to it all at once, but he hushes her with a single finger. "A lady like you should never have to open a door herself" he says as he walks away from her, and she finds herself standing there staring at him, and a tear in a white napkin...

Inspiration...

Sometimes life is a complete dead end. A writer's block in a blind alley. A series of indelible circumstances that lead you to nothingness. And although we may pride ourselves on finding our way in the more adverse of situations, sometimes the urge to give up overcomes sense and gravity. An overwhelming desire for a shoulder. A desperate need for scotch. A singular attempt to bite the tears back. Its moments such as these that are defining in failure. Like an emotion stretched thin and frayed at the edges. A breath underwater stretched unto infinity.

Its times like these that we are most in need of inspiration. A ray of light, a nudge in the right direction...divine guidance. To make the impossible seem human. And its times like these that we feel most forsaken. Lost, disoriented, helpless...cursed. Our greatest strength rendered useless in a single chess move. God's sleight of hand.

Its surprising how subtle inspiration is. It reveals itself not in a flash of color and blinding light, but rather in a veil of banality, the elusive shades of gray. In the amicable preaching of parents. In the discussion of life with confidantes. In faded journals and conversations. In that photograph when you had short hair. In home-cooked chicken curry, courtesy Mom. In clichéd movies about the impossible. The last pages of a book that made no sense before. An old song rediscovered. A lover's faith. The lonely drive through familiar roads and intimate memories. An evening walk down a rainy path. A second look from a stranger. A helping hand with no name. An implicit trust.

Watch for a twinkle in the eye. A fleeting rainbow. A happy day. The smallest things.

Sweet Nothings...

A lot of my posts talk about understanding the mundane. About everyday incidents and fluttering thoughts joined together at the hip. About repeatability at its best, wrapping itself around our frailties and our weekends. About the indefinite cycle of hop-scotch. Things taken for granted. The Earth's rotation and Google maps.

A book I read recently had one of the most beautiful quotes I have ever come across. It stated, "The most amazing thing that a man will ever get to see in his life is the body of a woman". Being the closet romantic that I am, it struck a chord. Not an orchestra of hope or the flashback of reminiscences, but a slight breathlessness of emotion, a skipped beat. A recognition of those faded moments when fate and feeling collide in a flash of color, when time slows down and closeness intensifies.

I have always believed that beauty is instinctive, that the awe is animalistic. That its not in the comfortability or the trust or the relationship itself, but in something much more clichéd and commonplace. Its in the flick of her wrist as she pulls at that contemplative strand of hair. Its in the place between the head and shoulder where she lies to listen to your voice. Its in the blink of her look, her want. In the smile of last night and the last hug before the rain. The hand around the waist in that timeless dance. The cheek-to-cheek. The static of first contact. In the movie scenes and the lyrics. In that final wandering thought, and the next one. Its in the faded picture thats crumpled from being in the wallet so long. Its in the jacket that smells of her. Its in those infinite little things that melt together into one breath of bliss, one gaze at eternity, one shot at love.

Life throws quite a fair share of conspicuous issues our way. And its this bag of small wonderfuls that makes it all worthwhile. The whispers and the silences, the scents and the touches, the glances and the flickers. The sweet nothings that we seldom understand.

Defining Moments...

We all look for defining moments in our life. Punctuations in our otherwise continuous survival. Pinpoints. Put up on the refrigerator door to feel good about ourselves. A scrapbook neatly arranged into dates, color-coded, and cross-referenced. A neat row of milestones behind us to lull us into the security that life can be written onto a set of greeting cards. That all of it can be arranged into sections, like a shopping mall. Where you can walk into your past and know from the labels just where you need to go...to relive an old incident, to relearn an old lesson, or just to look up something you never intended on doing or being. Like a grammatically correct sentence, with the appropriate amount of commas in between, to pause for effect.

And a nice big full stop at the very end for everyone, an exclamation point for the fortunate and the prosperous. The proverbial fulfillment of everything. The answer to the question of Life. We look away at the very mention of the Big White Light being a question mark. That after all this time we still leave with questions unanswered...dreams unfulfilled...thoughts unsaid...moments left behind. That after everything we've been through, we're still lost between the sun and the moon and the almanacs. That after the countless debates, discussions, self-reflections and analysis's, the tombstone lacks the phrase it needs. A whirly mist of overlapping shapes. A shadow play of silhouettes.

And so we look for song lyrics in our existence. Turn to chocolates and shoulders. Stare into the night and think about intersections. Pick up the phone and dont dial. Help the needy and play monopoly. Take annual vacations. Cut ourselves shaving, burn ourselves cooking, wound ourselves trusting. Give names to emotions, titles to streets, and hearts to strangers. Define our lives into little moments that only we can remember. Catalog them neatly into our mind and guard them jealously, in hope that at the very end all the pieces will fit together into one giant jigsaw.

Its all just one big cotton-candy machine. Smeared eye-shadow fading into last night's bruise. A tinge of purple in gray. Broken pieces of the last glass.

25 Things I Hate...

25. Small talk.

24. Giving up smoking. Giving up.

23. People who think they're smarter than me, but arent.

22. Inspirational sayings.

21. The rain.

20. Hopes and expectations.

19. People who expect the world to "work in a certain way".

18. Indian cuisine at restaurants.

17. The concept of emotion, and second chances.

16. Bad color combinations and condescending bullshitters.

15. Promises that cannot be kept.

14. Humid mornings, cloudy mornings, sunny mornings...all mornings.

13. New places that look so much like the last place I've been to.

12. Having chosen...having to have chosen.

11. Lies. Gossip.

10. Knowing so much and keeping so quiet.

09. Disorder, crowds, and optimists.

08. Being right most of the time.

07. Women who clap you on the back, or pull their own chairs.

06. Keeping in touch via biweekly offliners and "how're-you-doing"s.

05. Incorrect grammar and bad firsts.

04. Looking back. Might've-beens. Far-aways.

03. Old voices in new conversations.

02. Missing people who've gone.

01. Searching...