Welcome to the second installment in this series. Some basic house rules before we proceed together.
First, if you have somehow reached this story without reading the one that came before it, then you can find it here. If you attempt to proceed without reading it, you may indeed find immense satisfaction but will certainly find hopeless confusion as well.
Second, as previously promised, I will be giving you a musical guide to compliment the written word. These songs helped me write these words, put me in touch with my soul, and in some cases, brought me back to these moments you will read about.
I suggest listening to the music softly while you read, however, you may do as you wish.
If you have duly prepared yourself, then I have no further reason to delay you.
Now let’s see…where were we? Oh yes, five months later…
The instant I saw her I thought my heart was going to explode from the overwhelming rush of life that flooded it instantaneously. I thought to myself that surely it was more than any single organ could handle. Turns out the heart is far stronger than I give it credit for.
I had never experienced such a deluge of emotion before and, I must say, it was wild. I remember actually bursting out in suppressed laughter because I simply could not contain the joy in my emotions.
My face must have looked like a hopeless seesaw of confusion.
I kept becoming aware of the fact I was grinning so much that I actually tried to tell myself to calm it down a little bit. Except everything was so internally flustered that by the time that command reached my facial muscles, they would over-correct and bring my wide smile all the way down to a near deathly serious face.
Realizing just how dramatic that over-correction had been, I tried softly smiling again but sure enough, by the time the mental command reached my cheeks, I looked something like a political cartoon character.
After a few more flirtations ranging somewhere between a coroner and a political cartoon, I finally realized any hope of controlling of my face was gone. I decided the best course of action was to try containment rather than complete control.
I pursed my lips to try and hold back my ridiculous smile. For a while it worked but even that proved fruitless quickly. I felt as if Sampson himself was using the last of his failing strength to bring down the walls of muscular control. Sure enough, just as in the biblical tale, those walls came careening down and my face crashed back to that stupid smile.
I am terrified to think back on how I must have looked in those ten seconds it took her to walk up to me on the street that day. It’s a miracle she didn’t think I was a loon and turn and run. I wouldn’t have blamed her.
That is how recklessly happy this girl makes me feel. That overwhelming rush of life that flooded my soul with blissful happiness and all-encompassing peace.
How crazy is that?!
She is not the only woman I care about, she may not even be the only woman I love, but she is the only woman who can do that to me every single time I see her.
I remember running around my room like mad a few hours before we were set to meet that particular spring afternoon. I was trying to figure out what the hell I was going to wear. The rendezvous was innocent enough, not bearing the four letter label that locks most men into a state of gripping fear and apprehension. We were just going to walk and talk.
Yet I found myself more flustered and perplexed than perhaps any of the many four letter labeled rendezvous I have had in the past.
I tried on three or four different shirts, each time running out of my room and down the hall for the opinions of my Parisian friend, who had exceptional taste, and my friend from Chile. I trusted both of their opinions implicitly during a time when I was unable to confidently rely on my own.
I settled on a white button down shirt, light jeans, and brown monk-strapped shoes, more than appropriate for an afternoon ambling amongst the picturesque mix of modern and historic that is the city of Milan.
“Not too much, not too little,” I quietly reassured myself as I inspected every detail of the ensemble in the mirror before finally feeling satisfied enough with it to depart for our pre-determined meeting point.
I had asked her to meet me that day. I was craving a conversation and she finally had an opening in her ridiculously busy schedule. She was so intelligent and soulful, I cherished every moment of every conversation we had.
We walked through the city of Milan talking about school, art, people, life, ourselves, and our lives.
After a few hours of conversation, we found ourselves on the canal in a section of the city called Navigli. It’s a beautiful area and is always full of life once the sun goes down. The canal is lined with quaint restaurants, shops and even a few churches. You would be hard pressed to find an evening along the canal without hearing fragments of thousands of conversations bouncing in the air.
It’s a favorite amongst university students for apertivo. Something about the faint lighting, the vibrance of its visitors and the bulging stones that covered the streets gave me a warm feeling of existentialism every time I walked that route.
The sun was just beginning to drop in the sky and dusk was quickly being ushered into his normal seat at the theatre. We were walking slowly together along one of the canals….step…step…step…step. To my right was a railing constructed of stone that ran the length of the canal, to my left an aura of grace and poise.
Spaceship Coupe – Justin Timberlake
She was a vision to observe along the canal at sunset.
I greedily observed her as we walked. The way she carried herself possessed the grace of royalty. I remembered watching documentaries with my mother many years ago about the life of Princess Diana. She possessed a grace and poise that few women in the history of the world have been fortunate enough to even come close to replicating.
That was the closest comparison I could make. Not a direct comparison mind you but very close.
We spoke in English the entire time.
Thank god.
My Italian was horrendous, certainly nowhere near fluent enough to carry the kind of conversations we were having. She spoke my mother tongue remarkably well. She wanted to learn it well enough to study in the states someday.
I have always been outgoing and never had problems communicating with people. The only communication problems I ever encountered were self-inflicted ones. I relished in the challenge of communicating effectively with someone in a language that does not hold the same comforting intimacy as one’s mother tongue.
I thought it would prove challenging, but I was sadly mistaken.
Save a few times when I had to explain more difficult concepts, we held seamless conversations. I tried to wrap my head around the fact that my thoughts were entering her mind, being translated, understood, analyzed and opinions of her own were formed in moments, beautiful opinions I might add. (Three keys: make a conscious effort to speak slowly, pauses are your friend and enunciate.)
When she would ponder something, she would softly throw her head back and look skywards. Her dark eyes would shoot to the heavens, her mouth would open for a moment, and then quickly close as her lips pursed into a tight line. Her hair would ever so softly fall back with the motion of her head and settle again as if it had never moved to begin with. It was almost as if she was silently looking to the sun and the stars to collect her thoughts and garner their input.
They must know her well because her responses carried as much depth and intricacy as those celestial balls of light do.
Sometimes she would look at me before she spoke. Other times she would begin talking with her eyes still fixed on the heavens and her mouth in an open smile, like the sun, the moon and the stars were all talking to her directly, and she was choosing which input she agreed with the most.
I could not get over what I was witnessing with my very own eyes. Every time I thought I could not be more astonished than I was before she would prove me wrong in almost the same instant such a sacrilegious thought had dared to pass through the outer fringes of my mind.
As dusk's familiar costume of red and yellow hues began to pervade the sky above us, we continued to walk, and I continued to watch her in utter awe.
She got a call and began to converse in Italian. I rested my elbows on the stone railing and leaned against it with my back to the canal and my gaze fixed upon her.
Watching her converse in her mother tongue made me marvel even more at the fact that we had held deep conversations on topics such as politics, life, philosophy, kindness and religion with ease for the better part of two hours.
The softness in her voice and the soft emotions in her face that slipped through as she spoke combined with the warmth of the sun lulled me into a cozy comatose of tranquility.
I broke my gaze from her for a moment and surveyed the scene around us.
People of innumerable backgrounds and diversities were milling about on both sides of the canal. The balconies of the apartments across the river were dotted with green plants. Across the canal, an older gentleman was playing a guitar that was blaring through a small speaker and reverberating across the canal walls, spilling over into the streets above them.
As I looked out toward the setting sun, and the portrait of rooftops that it was falling closer and closer to, I was overcome with a feeling I can only describe as a sort of high.
I suddenly became very self-aware.
Aware of all the sounds and smells that floated around us, first of my own body and presence, then of my presence amongst the sea of hundreds that surrounded me. I felt overwhelmingly alive in every fiber of my being. It was a better feeling than any high any drug has ever given me and more addictive, too.
In that moment, I think I understood why some people are obsessed with traveling and seeing the world.
It’s a magical place that contains inordinate amounts of beauty if you know how to look for all the beauty it contains, even in the smallest of moments.
I pondered how in the world I ended up in that spot in that moment in time with the woman who was beside me, who was completely unaware of my sudden enlightenment to my very existence.
I looked out at the basilicas and red shingled rooftops that stretched out before me across the city. They were beginning to softly embrace the red and yellow hues falling toward them that grew darker and more brilliant with each passing minute.
I looked back at this indescribable woman next to me who had just hung up the phone.
She seemed to notice something different and let her inquisitiveness take hold.
“What?” she asked me curiously.
I looked at her, letting a soft smile settle on my face.
“Nothing,” I replied still smiling.
Truthfully, that answer could not have been further from the truth.
In that moment, I was blissfully and selfishly happy. In that moment, I was at peace. In that moment, I was more in touch with my soul than I had ever been before. In that moment, my heart overflowed.
She told me she was meeting with some of her friends later on and she had to leave soon. We walked back to the metro and we parted ways again.
Some weeks passed before I saw her next. The next encounter I had with her was a completely unanticipated one. The occasion that evening, as I recall, was a party organized by one of the university dormitories…but that’s another story.
