On a Given Saturday

Risen early. A leisured morning. I wore my darkblue sun dress, having lately reclaimed the color from my somber past. The compliments I received and the look of my warm complexion in it overrode the fleeting cringe. A couple months ago I bought the first yellow shirt I’d ever owned and I would have rather worn that. But the white skirt, coincidentally bought with the blue dress was stained- it was the first of that color for a skirt too, and the yellow and white made a pleasing pair. Daring I thought, in all my now 32 years.

I stood on the train platform glancing around to make sure I was where I was suppose to be, favoring my right knee and noting with a smile that though silver and slick, trains had lost none of their romance. My meager supplies wouldn’t carry me far but my trip down the coast to San Juan Capistrano carried me far enough out of my own mind and into the fabric of my heart- azure sea, old plastered walls…

I tested several seats and still found myself going backwards and windowless, but it seemed perfect to tuck my feet up and incline my large frame- read my book about an island and wished myself there as the train blurred the landscape. My brow, in unguarded moments contracted in dissatisfaction- Claudius would say to bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom contracted in a brow of woe… but I have no idea what this bearer mourns, and yet she does, unabated on two weeks.

I heard the clipped cadence of “tickets please” and with things for though contracted, a smile of amusement would play upon these lips, as this anachronistic man stopped short, hand extended, punch, punch, with his hat just so in all seriousness moved through the train.

I arrived and was not upswept in arms embraced. Neither a man, nor a lover, my friend was late. My feet brandished the concrete nature of here and now as I was carried into the orbit of my friends distress, her joys, her questions, and how she speaks to me as kindred, as an artist… and we landed after many turns on a quiet Café Mozart for lunch. I had chicken schnitzel and with each bite incongruously took me to Turkey. The Germans are everywhere I said. Elisa nodded in agreement. From one German to another it seemed to be so… I wished to be everywhere also. And we were the only diners at the restaurant.
As we talked I wondered how the place stayed in business and she said, parties. And like a magic word uttered the crew quietly set themselves up around us. One stack of white something or others moored themselves before my eyes and then tables with rapidity rolled by and built up like a break to the right and then the umbrellas around us flew off their ornamented tables and one by one they themselves disappeared in the wake. Until our table, lonely and the sea impatient, waited to consume it.

And finally when as we rose and wadded past the shops it seemed as if the structure of our lives was breaking up around us so that I was quiet and did not wonder where we would land but felt the sand, and noted the sun and we, racing toward I know not what. Until with luck and a late train I bounded to meet it.
But the arch of the evening came on and I found myself in Hollywood sitting on a curb waiting to be picked up and feeling the quiet of a side street about to give birth to a sprawling complex. It would never whisper as it did now- and over dinner and a chance encounter with other friends I found myself full and brimming. And Kerry said, here I bought you this. And out came this black workout outfit for $10. And in the parking lot by our cars I put on the pants and took off my dress and found myself garnered in the soft comfort of mourning colors. My red bra only exposed for a short time…