10/01/2009

Lost in the moment

I´m sitting back on the couch in my living room with the computer on my lap, writing this under the pitch-black darkness of a blackout. Bruce Springsteen rages on through the MP3 player.
The back of the room basks in the bluish-silver glow from the monitor and is reflected back against my nape by the wide two-paneled window just a palm beyond the sofa.

There´s this airplane-shaped pencil sharpener resting tucked, half-lost, half-found among the throwpillows at my back. My grandmother gave it to me as a gift a few days ago, some memento from this little resort town we´d used to go back when I was a kid.
“You so used to love airplanes, do you remember?” she told me over the phone when I called in to thank her. “Do you remember how you used to know the names of all airplanes that ever existed?”

I´m holding the little faux-brass plated toy in my hand, watching its sleek copper-plated surface turn green against the lit-up blue monitor screen: MADE IN CHINA, it says. It´s the miniature of a B-1 Lancer bomber. It´s this tail-end relic from the waning days of the Cold War now, firebombing caves into cinders under Mid-Eastern desert skies.

K. got married last weekend and I was the Best Man sitting at the front row, no, second-front row with this gorgeous girl I used to know from long ago, back in the day, College and stuff, by my side. She was wearing purple. All the maids of honor were also clad in purple.
When the priest, this amiable if not a tad annoying, short, stocky little friendly stump in a white cape like a medieval Liberace minus the diamonds, began fooling around as to how the bride had ensnared, dazzled, captured the groom´s heart, K. slid his hand behind his back and gave us all-- the audience- the thumbs-up sign.
You know. Right off the bat: Firebombing the congregation just like that, just like a Lancer or a popstar.

“Yer gonna bring me a Wii from New York, right?,” the Maid of Honor turns to me and asks, and just like myself, she´s totally lost in the moment, but for all the different reasons.