Another
Sunday escapes the trap of his spider web at Minervaplein. While so many
managed to enjoy the guilty pleasure of doing absolutely nothing; he managed to
suffer gingerly about not doing enough. This constant preoccupation with productivity
on his leisure time was one of his many, less obvious, but nonetheless, equally
enchanting idiosyncrasies. Counting cheese and bread slices was another one.
Superficially one might dismiss with the blink of an eye this handsome, seemingly average young man. He is the guy you bump into in the train or supermarket and you respond with an automatic "pardon me" or "so sorry" without remembering a single thing about him two seconds later. He was that guy who asked for the time and you replied absentmindedly with a polite, mechanical smile. He was your brother's nice looking friend, you exchanged pleasantries a couple of times, but you were not sure of even his name. He was his worst critic and would probably agree on all counts.
But
those lucky enough to invest an extra second, to notice for more than an
instant, the reward was infinite, the memory: eternal and comforting. The
unassuming creaminess of the liquid cinnamon of his eyes, the impossibly
tempting strawberry that was his mouth. A cruel mirage one treasures and
retreats to on a lonely, warm, Pacific evening.
His
beautiful long fingers, guardians of his equally horrible handwriting. Graceful
dancing legs of a skillful, weaving spider with a pearly head; expertly
knitting a dream like web. Then it was obvious that he was far from average and
could never be ordinary, no matter what he said, his modesty would never allow
him to agree.
Another
Sunday escapes the trap of his spider web at Minervaplein. In his bedroom he
looks out the window briefly before finishing the note he was writing her:
So
last night there was the moon, I saw it: and Minervaplein becomes sort of like
a living room with soft light. The sounds from the open‑air concert on the
Museumplein seemed to
come from a radio set in the corner of Minervaplein....
Visions
of shorter sentences and “less-associations” in his writing (as he called them)
forced his perfect strawberries to melt into an unnaturally intoxicating wine,
a smile that one could get drunk on. How was he to know that when those lines
he authored flew across the sea like drunken butterflies, and elegantly landed
on her like doves one conjures up in the hands of gitanas dancing bulerías; it
was inevitable that he, her forbidden, unreachable, and eternal muse, work his
magic again. She had no visions of shorter sentences or less associations; he
had bewitchingly transported her to his world.
What
would the new week bring him? Perhaps he should have gone to bed earlier
Saturday night but he watched a movie instead; and somewhere in it, he
noticed a face. One that fleetingly reminded him of someone he knew. Perhaps a
past liaison, a face in a crowd, a stranger in a train? It stirred a faint,
distant memory but his mind came back to his Minervaplein Sunday: The soccer
game where at least this time, he didn’t get a black eye but didn’t emerge
victorious either. He was not in the mood for tango as a consequence and
definitely not in the mood for any more productivity. Perhaps succumbing to the
verses of a light, predictable novel would shoo away any possibilities of heavy
dreaming of someone else.
She
would have told him it was the intention that was important, but he would find
no comfort in her words. Perhaps a back rub and a hot bath would be more
productive and beneficial to him as this Minervaplein Sunday escaped his web,
and would soon be nothing more than a forgotten memory.
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