...one more perfect summer afternoon.
These days, deep within the nebulae of friends where I orbit, there is a question that comes up at least once a day. It is a simple question with no single answer. Each person's response in different, from one another and often from day to day. It is five words that define chaos theory, the butterfly's wing that causes hurricane Katrina.
What are you looking for?
Throughout my life I have asked myself that question, now I ask my friends and they have picked up on the puzzle. I hear them out of the corner of my ear asking others the same thing.
What are you looking for?
When I was young I was looking to be old enough to drive a car.
Then I was looking to be attractive enough to catch the eye of THAT GIRL in drama club.
As I finished school and moved into the world I was looking for the patht that would bring me fame, fortune and happiness.
I must add here that when each of us has to face this question it is a safe bet to assume that at least part of the response is a frame for happiness. No one seeks to be unhappy, unhappiness seeks us.
As I have grown older though my own response to this question has become more and more abstract. For the longest time I have, when asked, said that I was merely looking for one more perfect summer day.
I can remember the day I am thinking of too. It was summer in Rialto, the little town in So Cal where I lived until I was 9. I got up early that day, it was summer after all and the day was not to be wasted, and climbed into my "baggies" (swimming Trunks) that I had left in a damp heap next to my bed the previous evening. Pulled on a t-shirt and when out to eat a bowl of Sugar Pops before climbing back into my "summer home", the dough boy swimming pool in the back yard. Morning was spent making said pool into a whirlpool and riding the current like a sea turtle in the gulf stream.
While I was in the pool one of my Mom's friends came over to visit, the one that gave me those odd feelings in my stomach when she smiled at me, and she made a point of coming out to say hello. I was nine and it seemed perfectly normal to me, consider that when I grew up I was going to marry her anyway.
I got tired of the pool just about the time my friend Steve Brown showed up and asked if I wanted to go to "recreation down at our school, W.A. Meyers. During the summer kids could pay a dime and go into the auditorium at the school and play ping pong, or shuffle board or board games o could jsut hang out and look at each other. The latter was a favorite of all the guys as we were tryng to come to grips with these odd feelings (like the one I mentioned earlier) that looking at the girls gave us. Some of the guys who had older brothers, like me, introduced new words to our vocabulary and they brought in concepts we didn't understand but were intriguing nonetheless.
For their part the girls looked back at us in an alluring way that told us that they knew something we didn't. It was the first blush of my experience with the feminine mystique and it carried with it heady promises.
S the day got warmer there was ice cream to be eaten, chocolate malt off of flat wooden spoons that came wrapped like medical appliances in crisp white paper. You had to eat it fast because even though it cam out of the cooler hard a glacial slope the desert sun soon put an end to that. If it drip on your skin, inevitably brown like a coconut this late in the summer, so much the better. The rivulets of Carnation chocolate cooled you down, tasted just as good (or better) liked off your fingers and gave the grass a place to stick when you went to roll in it.
Late afternoon and we were bored so we drug out a skull and cross bones kite that survived in my closet since March (the apex of the kiting year). The hat Sanat Ana rolled in off the desert and lifted Jolly old Rodger high in air so hot I wondered why the paper skull didn't burst into flames and plummet to earth like a Nazi fighter. In a few minutes the kite was high and stable enough to tie off to a sprinkler head. Then we laid on our back in the freshly shaved brown grass, hands behind our heads, watching the tail made of old sweat sock dance to and fro.
Dinnertime came, breaded veal cutlets, french cut green beans and mashed potatoes. Then an hour or two of TV, laying on the floor with my Dad. He would always lay paralell to the creen and I would rest my chin on the curve of his rib while we watched. Dad would smoke and I would drink root beer. Eventually I would doze and later find myself in my PJs in my bed with the vinyl cowboy riding the bucking bronco headboard.
That was my perfect day for so long I cannot remember. It is still a good answer to the question even though these days my mind has edited things once again, cutting back more detail in an emotional shorthand. Now my perfect happiness is simpler still, like moment caught in a strobe light. It is not so descriptive anymore, more visceral and simplistic.
What am I looking for now?
Velvet and stars
Fingertips and nails gently touching my shoulder in passing
Smooth contours that my hand can recall as if they were cast in flesh to follow them.
Hair conditioner all night long
Tea and talk
A smile that speaks volumes
Whispers in the darkness that give way to gentle breathing.
The answers seems so simple but attaining them is no easier then chasing that one summer afternoon.
What are you looking for?
Throughout my life I have asked myself that question, now I ask my friends and they have picked up on the puzzle. I hear them out of the corner of my ear asking others the same thing.
What are you looking for?
When I was young I was looking to be old enough to drive a car.
Then I was looking to be attractive enough to catch the eye of THAT GIRL in drama club.
As I finished school and moved into the world I was looking for the patht that would bring me fame, fortune and happiness.
I must add here that when each of us has to face this question it is a safe bet to assume that at least part of the response is a frame for happiness. No one seeks to be unhappy, unhappiness seeks us.
As I have grown older though my own response to this question has become more and more abstract. For the longest time I have, when asked, said that I was merely looking for one more perfect summer day.
I can remember the day I am thinking of too. It was summer in Rialto, the little town in So Cal where I lived until I was 9. I got up early that day, it was summer after all and the day was not to be wasted, and climbed into my "baggies" (swimming Trunks) that I had left in a damp heap next to my bed the previous evening. Pulled on a t-shirt and when out to eat a bowl of Sugar Pops before climbing back into my "summer home", the dough boy swimming pool in the back yard. Morning was spent making said pool into a whirlpool and riding the current like a sea turtle in the gulf stream.
While I was in the pool one of my Mom's friends came over to visit, the one that gave me those odd feelings in my stomach when she smiled at me, and she made a point of coming out to say hello. I was nine and it seemed perfectly normal to me, consider that when I grew up I was going to marry her anyway.
I got tired of the pool just about the time my friend Steve Brown showed up and asked if I wanted to go to "recreation down at our school, W.A. Meyers. During the summer kids could pay a dime and go into the auditorium at the school and play ping pong, or shuffle board or board games o could jsut hang out and look at each other. The latter was a favorite of all the guys as we were tryng to come to grips with these odd feelings (like the one I mentioned earlier) that looking at the girls gave us. Some of the guys who had older brothers, like me, introduced new words to our vocabulary and they brought in concepts we didn't understand but were intriguing nonetheless.
For their part the girls looked back at us in an alluring way that told us that they knew something we didn't. It was the first blush of my experience with the feminine mystique and it carried with it heady promises.
S the day got warmer there was ice cream to be eaten, chocolate malt off of flat wooden spoons that came wrapped like medical appliances in crisp white paper. You had to eat it fast because even though it cam out of the cooler hard a glacial slope the desert sun soon put an end to that. If it drip on your skin, inevitably brown like a coconut this late in the summer, so much the better. The rivulets of Carnation chocolate cooled you down, tasted just as good (or better) liked off your fingers and gave the grass a place to stick when you went to roll in it.
Late afternoon and we were bored so we drug out a skull and cross bones kite that survived in my closet since March (the apex of the kiting year). The hat Sanat Ana rolled in off the desert and lifted Jolly old Rodger high in air so hot I wondered why the paper skull didn't burst into flames and plummet to earth like a Nazi fighter. In a few minutes the kite was high and stable enough to tie off to a sprinkler head. Then we laid on our back in the freshly shaved brown grass, hands behind our heads, watching the tail made of old sweat sock dance to and fro.
Dinnertime came, breaded veal cutlets, french cut green beans and mashed potatoes. Then an hour or two of TV, laying on the floor with my Dad. He would always lay paralell to the creen and I would rest my chin on the curve of his rib while we watched. Dad would smoke and I would drink root beer. Eventually I would doze and later find myself in my PJs in my bed with the vinyl cowboy riding the bucking bronco headboard.
That was my perfect day for so long I cannot remember. It is still a good answer to the question even though these days my mind has edited things once again, cutting back more detail in an emotional shorthand. Now my perfect happiness is simpler still, like moment caught in a strobe light. It is not so descriptive anymore, more visceral and simplistic.
What am I looking for now?
Velvet and stars
Fingertips and nails gently touching my shoulder in passing
Smooth contours that my hand can recall as if they were cast in flesh to follow them.
Hair conditioner all night long
Tea and talk
A smile that speaks volumes
Whispers in the darkness that give way to gentle breathing.
The answers seems so simple but attaining them is no easier then chasing that one summer afternoon.
posted by Martin "Bucky" Cameron at
3:45 PM
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