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.

I’ve assembled the short story I wrote, “Sketches of the inchoate”, into a single text, which you can find attached below.

Sketches_of_the_Inchoate

This is a concept piece I’ve been working on for about a month, inspired by Mussorgsky’s, Pictures at an Exhibition, and Bach’s, French Suites, structured as a series of musical gifts.

However, the tonality is closer to Ravel and Kodály, with heavy use of pentatonics, and full chords in the cello.

Who are you?

We show up to the market, disturbingly professional in our shopping:

You point at a parking spot, which I barrel into, in one continuous motion.

We both get out of the car like The Matrix, and walk through the automatic doors to the market like we might rob the place, quickly agreeing on exactly what we want for dinner, and the consequent ingredients, being politely aggressive to everyone around us, managing the situation like we’re closing a transaction as quickly as possible, so as to avoid imposing undue costs on an important client.

Mundane considerations, such as which one of the many indifferentiable brands of Swedish produce that we should purchase get ruthlessly processed by two towering automatons, their confidence alarming ordinary shoppers, as we point at things, mercilessly throwing them into our cart, inspiring others, immaculately executing upon a menu that we conceive of on the spot, looking more like a pair of football players than shoppers.

Only the classics are ultimately permitted:

Gravlax, pickled herring, toast Skagen, Jansson’s temptation – boom, done.

We pass the beer isle, and I grab several armfuls of Mikkeller beers, because I like them.

The checkout becomes reduced to a nothing, as I load items from the cart onto the belt, and you organize them on the belt, the consummate team, with your credit card already out, immediately ready for payment once all items have been loaded, both of us watching the prices the whole time for any sales that may have been missed.

I drive us home, not as fast as the way in, but fast, with no music playing, barely talking:

We’re going to make love before cooking dinner, and it’s going to be extreme, because car –

Baby powder.

We are both plainly in love with each other at this point, which is now no longer a secret of any order –

We are desperate people.

We get back to the house, leaving the groceries in the car, because something far more important might expire, and so we bolt the moment I open the front door to the house, with my keys already out the moment we exit the car –

Running through the interior of the house, we know the common area we both have in mind, which we agree upon by looking at each other as we’re running.

As we’re running, I pull up, “Maps”, by The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, on my phone, and hit the play button, carrying my phone until I see the large couch in the center of the common area that I know we both have in mind –

I toss my phone into the right corner of the couch, just as the song is just getting started, and dive into the left corner, twisting my body around mid-flight, so I can finally, really see you, separating the section that I’ve landed on a bit due to the concussive force of my impact.

You follow shortly after, jumping in as well, landing to the right of me, with your beautiful legs on top of me, smiling, pushing the couch back as well upon landing, both of us moving, and I turn into you, grabbing the back of your head, under your hair, with every last bit of psychological well-being that I have left in me.

The house’s bluetooth speakers pick up the signal from my phone, causing the song to circulate, positively blasting, with happenstance adding ever more to our favor, as the evening Sun light cuts through the entire room, into your eyes above me, and suddenly, you appear to me, your face inches away from mine, with the blue echoes of the house lights bouncing around behind you, in straight horizontal lines above and beside your head.

Substantial time passes, and we don’t bother to take each other’s clothes off –

Our hands and arms snaked around each other’s backs, heads, and bottoms, grasping for the silhouettes that we saw earlier burned by the Sun into the middle of the air, now occasionally uttering nonsense, but none of it works:

Ultimately naked on a stranger’s couch, lost in an environment that would almost certainly not protect what we’ve found, we plum what time allows –

Torrid and lurid desires haplessly trying to recreate the indelible realities that we both experienced hurtling along the surface of the Earth, at velocities that our Creator might eventually frown upon, in a tiny, fragile, little thing, that holds our futures in an eggshell, ultimately settling for what we have –

Far more than anything we’ve ever expected.

Acceleration

You both decide to cook dinner at home after the beach, and drive into town to pick up groceries.

As you’re driving, you reach down to your phone, and put on, “Across the Universe”, as arranged by Fiona Apple, and after listening to the words for a bit, she says,

“Are you trying to tell me something?”

You reply, smiling, but without looking at her,

“That was pretty good,” continuing to stare at the road ahead.

She’s a bit disappointed in your response to her joke, and you seem overly serious:

Looking at you, she now sees the person that she works with, with the strange addition of a ballad playing –

Nonetheless, she’s annoyed that you didn’t fully appreciate her joke.

After the song ends, you grab your phone again, and play, “Dig”, by Incubus:

She looks at you again, this time a bit suspicious, as her ex-boyfriend would always play that song while driving.

Now tan, built well, she can see your profile with an animal gaze into the road ahead –

She can see the lens above your pupil illuminated as the sun starts to set a bit behind the forest to the left, and as she looks from the top of your eye down to the bottom, she sees the lit up surface of the lens lift forward away from your eye, in the shape of a parabola.

You look like a machine:

An exaggerated representation of the person that she sees at work.

Then she continues to look down, seeing the tattered cloth around the shoulders of your shirt, and sees that you deliberately started with an already totally stupid thing, and consciously pushed it completely over the edge, by cutting off the sleeves –

She imagines the psychology at the moment of purchase, as you spotted it, at some horrible store, imagining you carefully selecting the right size, after an unreasonably hard day at work, and your sincere, quiet enjoyment upon finding, “the right one.”

She realizes that your ridiculousness could be something that you do automatically to distract from the fact that you’re simply not normal, sizing you down a bit.

Before the downbeat of the chorus, you take her hand and say,

“I think you should hold onto something,” and then roll up all of the windows.

Exactly on the downbeat, you lean into the gas pedal, staring into the visibly empty highway ahead, with the acceleration steady, but increasingly noticeable:

The sun receding further behind the forest that bounds the outer lanes of the highway,  with shadows rapidly painting the interior of the car, she hears the engine roar, and she feels the entire frame of the car start to vibrate –

Breaking her introspection, again, as if you knew something that you couldn’t have known without looking first.

You look over to her, and because she’s smiling so much, you again lean into the gas, this time out of synch with the music, the same pattern repeating, only out of synch, creating some apprehension of a third –

The entire car at this point rocking from the combustion of the engine, she sees even the dials in the dashboard moving at unfamiliar speeds, producing noises inside the cabin, with the wind pounding against the windshield.

She sees the melted ice in her drink churning in the cupholder, occasionally spilling, but she is nonetheless not afraid at all, other than by the realization that she trusts you, perhaps too much –

You take her hand and squeeze it, as she finds additional comfort in your denim shorts, and bare feet below, seeing a simply ridiculous man, that seems to really love her –

Like a proper hillbilly that’s stolen a rich man’s identity, seeing your hairy legs covered in goosebumps, concluding that you are obviously sharing in her excitement.

You look at her just long enough to make sure that she’s alright, with her smiling back, terribly excited, neither of you saying anything at all, with everything now appearing overexposed from the low angle of the sun, as she sees only the outlines of an abstraction in you, in which she has quite plainly entrusted her personal safety –

You squeeze her hand again, she finds relief, and you turn back to the road, putting both your hands on the wheel, continuing at what is now an absurd velocity.

She focuses on the music, as the lyrics set into the context, she realizes that all of this says something that you couldn’t possibly otherwise articulate:

That you see nothing else in this world when she is with you –

That there are only two of you, with no obstacles, as your mind accelerates, with no inhibitions, other than her wellbeing, like a car roaring down an open road.

“Ida … “, staring forward.

“Yes … “, she replies, as if asking a question.

“Ida I love you.”