There are days when you are neither here nor there, when your body is neither still nor moving, when your mind is neither occupied nor free of cares. Tonight was one such night. In the midst of deadlines, unwashed dishes, and unthrown trash, I am here, writing. In between wakefulness and sleep, my pen decides to kiss my journal good night.
It was an intoxicatingly unusual day, one that decidedly deserves to be journalized. It started with a meeting in a luxurious residence, where people who bumped into each other at a jewelry launch became friends. A piece of art exchanged hands, and a wide-eyed girl got sucked into a living daydream of color.
The day continued with a client (in danger of being sued) calling to say that the payment was ready, in cash. Just before the day ended, at 6PM on a Friday, a problem was solved.
And then there was the evening. With the backdrop of a running reel of a movie on Frida Kahlo’s life, in a language that was once mastered and loved, and in the shadows of a former professor (and a former infatuation), a passion was reignited. No—not for the professor, but for his language and for everything that his culture represented.
Then came the message from a boy a million miles away. Their friendship has spanned five years, but they have seen each other—physically, at least—only three, maybe four, times. The message—of someone thinking of someone else from halfway around the world—was enough to bring a secret smile and more than a little thumping of the heart. He had never been a boyfriend, had been nothing more than a blind-date-turned-lifelong-connection, and yet there was the feeling that this boy was one of those “who got away.” He hadn’t been lost, really—he was still there—but the memory of lost possibilities was enough to make the mind wander. The mind is a silly creature—it remembers what does not exist and forgets what is real. And it refuses to let you sleep.
This boy, this painting, Frida Kahlo and her vanity—what did these all mean? In the larger scheme of things? Why did they converge today of all days? And why are they keeping the mind and the heart in a stage of fluttering frenzy? What are art and romance, really, but luxuries that the mind fancies itself worthy of in spite of urgent things (such as dishes and deadlines) that beg to be done?
We can never really know, can we? The pen and the journal have been making out, but nothing has come out of it.
Except, maybe, for the hope of sweet dreams for the night. And the memory of one intoxicatingly unusual day that made for an interesting entry in a wide-eyed girl’s mind.
