Universo ao meu redor

We decide to take a trip to Italy together, which is a big deal, because it requires using vacation days, at the same time, and of course, people talk –

Everyone will understand, we’ve transitioned from office romance, into relationship.

This is not lost on us, but at this point, memories of the shoe incident resign:

A vestigial portrait of a curmudgeon freak, that can’t stand the sight of another man touching his woman –

It just happened out of order, in this case.

She’s gotten to know me well since then, and thinks that I’m a ridiculous person, as she’s unable to reconcile the office robot, with the guerrilla artist, part-time scientist.

Moreover, neither of us are fond of our current apartments, and she absolutely despises mine, which is admittedly awful, littered with guitars, and paintings in trash bags, like Syd Barrett’s asylum chamber, so we’re both excited to spend some time together in a place that is legitimately beautiful.

We decide on Sardegna, as we’ve both been a few times, and really enjoyed it, and also because it gives us an opportunity to make a quick stop in Rome.

We’ve booked a hotel within Costa Smeralda, with its own, private, cashless section of the beach, though we’re both a bit suspicious of being tethered to a hotel environment.

In terms of appearance, the hotel presents like a significantly smaller version of The Standard in the Meatpacking District:

The building is vertical, and flat, with significant glass coverage, a pale brick frame, though certainly not as tall or as wide, and the bricks are a bit yellowish in color.

Our room is simply ridiculous:

Massive, about 1,000 square feet, open floor plan, but for a moveable wooden partition, positioned between the bed and the windows, which have black iron frames, floor to ceiling, looking out onto the sea below.

There’s a full kitchen on the left wall of the space, with cupboards stocked full of lovely plates, cups, and cutlery, a Viking range cut into a white marble counter top, and a large, pale grey sectional to the right of the space, just off from the wall, across from an over-sized, brown, heavily weathered, extremely soft, leather love seat.

Otherwise, the room is mostly empty space, save for a few small tables and plants scattered about, with hardwood floors, and a giant Persian rug that covers the empty center of the room.

The bath is equally mental, with small, multicolored subway tiles along the actual shower wall, which is to the right when facing the windows, not sectioned off in any manner from the rest of the room, other than by the coloring of the tiles, which demarcates its area, together with the drain below the showerhead, with the rest of the tiles along the walls a faint grey.

The bathroom also has a wall of floor to ceiling windows, with an old-fashioned, iron, claw-foot tub, painted white, positioned along the right side of the room, parallel to the windows, with another wooden partition behind it, that also covers visibility into the shower.

The room number is 56, on the 17th floor, which is my birthday, in the European system, 5.6.17, which I make a point of, to which she responds,

“You’re a moron.”

To which I reply,

“Don’t be bitter that chance favors my boldness.”

“Your baldness?”

“If I ever go bald, you will refer to me, lovingly, as, ‘Your Baldness’.”

“If you ever go bald, I will refer to you only in the past tense.”

“So long as you use my title.”

I grab my phone, connect to the room’s Bluetooth, and begin a playlist commencing with, Renaissance Affair, by Hooverphonic, as we both get ready to head out for lunch.

…

We decide to risk it, and go for the hotel’s beachfront bar, which looks impressive online, though we agree in advance, that we’ll quickly grab two beers, and leave, if it’s filled with a bunch of hoi polloi whatnot tourists.

Walking from the hotel, we climb up a slight, sand hill, up to the bar, which is positioned on top of the hill, between the hotel and the sea, where a man politely asks us to remove our sandals before entering.

I entertain the notion, as I can already see the outlines of what looks like a beautiful chandelier hanging from the center of an extremely long, rectangular building at the top of the hill.

And so I take off my sandals, eyeing a row of shoes assembled by the other patrons.

Once we get close enough to see the interior, we are both taken back –

It’s one of the most astonishing spaces I have ever seen:

A busy, intricately patterned, hardwood floor reveals itself as we approach, the length of two Manhattan blocks, but the width of one, with no side walls, and now I know why he asked us to remove our sandals –

It’s because the flooring is of the order you’d find in a museum, with a wonderful grain, comprised of short, small planks, each about one foot long, and two inches wide, though arranged in a knotted pattern, preposterously detailed, totally incommensurate with what is appropriate for a dance floor, fit instead for an avant garde woodwork exhibition, mounted upon a wall.

We both smile at each other, implicitly agreeing to a least a few drinks, barring the truly extraordinarily awful.

We approach the bar, which is a long, rectangular slab of black marble, nearly the entire width of the space, and about two feet thick, with a large number of implausibly thin legs beneath, like a deconstructed spider, each made of dark wood, with some light colored accents in the grain, and bronze anchors.

We finally get up to the bar, and we can see the marble’s surface, which contains thin white, light blue, yellow, and grey veins, clustering occasionally into what look like puddles, consisting of the same colors.

There are two bronze tubs cut deep into the surface of the bar:

One is filled with beer and soda bottles and cans, and ice and melted water, and the other is a functioning sink, filled with spent cocktail glasses, and small soiled plates and cutlery.

I look closely at the bar, and see black steel slats cut into the entire width, beginning at the opposite end, closest to the bartender, and extending toward me for about 10 inches, to facilitate drainage along the workstation.

This prompts me to look below to trace the path of the drainage, and I see the same blackened steel in the floor under the bar, this time, with a rough surface, presumably operating as a grip, to prevent the bartender from slipping.

The wall behind the bartender is a massive, white marble wall, about 20 feet high, with a proportionally massive baroque wooden frame, that contains a mirror, above which is a hanging potted vine, housed in a bronze trap, that matches the sinks, forming a metallic, horizontal accent across the entire white wall, that is littered with green bits, that drape over everything below.

We’ve been reading the menu while waiting, and have decided on two dishes:

A burrata plate, which comes with a handful of flatbreads, and a rosemary and sea salt focaccia, together with a prosciutto, fig jam, and mozzarella baguette.

I initially expected the hotel kitchen to provide the food, but was yet again astounded to find that there’s both a refrigerator, and an oven, hidden in the wall behind the bartender, which is accessed by simply pressing a bit into it, causing a pressurized arm to release the applicable door.

When we get up to the bar, I can actually see the outlines of the two doors cut into the wall, and realize they’re chest-level, relieving the bartender of having to constantly hunch over, which after hours of doing so, would presumably be exhausting –

Everything about this place seems to have been relentlessly obsessed over, producing a borderline divine environment, wildly out of proportion to the amount of thought and effort that goes into an even excellent hotel bar.

The bartender hands us the two Ichnusa beers we’ve ordered, and tells us to find a seat, as the food will apparently be a minute.

So we find a seat, a couch, a smaller version of the same couch in our room, with a small, round, black marble table that matches the bar, with the same dizzying array of tiny wooden legs beneath.

I look up to see the large, bronze chandelier, with a parabolic, bowl shaped base, long slats cut into the bottom, through which the light above is shining.

The light source is a metallic bush of bronze antennae, with iridescent glass bulbs literally melted onto the ends, only partially illuminated, presumably because it’s still daylight.

The bronze column connecting the chandelier to the ceiling also has small antennae with bulbs on their ends, like the thorns on the stem of a rose.

Marisa Monte starts playing, O Bonde Do Dom, and now I’m legitimately suspicious of what’s going on around me, feeling as though, somehow, someone has stolen this entire scene from the innards of my mind –

That I stumbled upon a stolen dream, a group of bandits, meticulously reconstructing my vision of the external world, presumably now worried that I somehow showed up, foiling their cosmic plot.

I look up at the ceiling, to find that things get only even weirder –

Mounted into the beautiful, bronze colored, tin ceiling, I can see updated, Yamaha NS-10 audio monitors:

The same speakers that I used as a young audio engineer.

“This place is wonderful.”, she says –

I’m too confused to agree, instead staring in disbelief, at a memory mounted into a ceiling.