It was one of those times - or two, to be precise. You know the ones I'm talking about. The ones where, for one glorious, golden moment, the world seems bright and hopeful and worth all the effort it takes to stay alive in, worth the bleak fog of the workday and the bleary haze of the weekend. Worth the pain in your lower back that never quite seems to go away no matter how many mattresses you change; worth the niggling feeling in the back of your head that you aren't quite doing this living thing right, that there must be something more. Better than a chocolate ball on fire; better than the perfect third kiss, when you've learned the contours of each other's mouths well enough not to knock teeth anymore, but things haven't become so mundane as to lose the rosy glow of fresh lust.
It was just one of those times, and it started with a violin. We were walking along, nothing special, two girls in a mall full of women dressed exactly the same, as cool, distant and capitalist as it could get in an ostensibly non-dystopian world. Two girls, lost in their own moods, in the unpinnaable sorrows swirling inside their minds - until the first strains of the song, familiar but not, a violin rendition of Hotel California, a piece of soul flung out in a high-end concrete jungle. An old man and a young one; a violin and an instrument that looked like an electric guitar but couldn't have been anything less than true magic; and two sad girls. A wave of music, its tendrils gently sifting through our minds, soothing as a mother's touch on a hot forehead. We sat there, then, for how could we not? Collapsed, on the floor next to the glass wall, and let the quilted music wrap us in its warm embrace, let half-remembered words string together unbearable emotion, let the violin lead us from dance to despair and back again, full of mirth and mischief and sheer, unapologetic emotion.
And when we left, it was only to fall into another embrace - to sit near the window of the beautiful cafe - to look up mid-sentence to see her face twist - to look at what had captured her attention so and see - see a man and his child, her legs wrapped around his throat, his hands holding on to her stubby arms, holding her close as he raced through the courtyard, surrounded by Michael Kors and Gucci, but what did it matter in the face of this, in the face of a father and his child, running around for the sheer joy of it, wind in their hair and glee on their faces, running and dancing and whooping and twirling and laughing, laughing with such unabashed joy, like happiness was a birthright and by god, would they claim it.
Like happiness was a birthright, and by god, we should claim it.
~Sam
It was just one of those times, and it started with a violin. We were walking along, nothing special, two girls in a mall full of women dressed exactly the same, as cool, distant and capitalist as it could get in an ostensibly non-dystopian world. Two girls, lost in their own moods, in the unpinnaable sorrows swirling inside their minds - until the first strains of the song, familiar but not, a violin rendition of Hotel California, a piece of soul flung out in a high-end concrete jungle. An old man and a young one; a violin and an instrument that looked like an electric guitar but couldn't have been anything less than true magic; and two sad girls. A wave of music, its tendrils gently sifting through our minds, soothing as a mother's touch on a hot forehead. We sat there, then, for how could we not? Collapsed, on the floor next to the glass wall, and let the quilted music wrap us in its warm embrace, let half-remembered words string together unbearable emotion, let the violin lead us from dance to despair and back again, full of mirth and mischief and sheer, unapologetic emotion.
And when we left, it was only to fall into another embrace - to sit near the window of the beautiful cafe - to look up mid-sentence to see her face twist - to look at what had captured her attention so and see - see a man and his child, her legs wrapped around his throat, his hands holding on to her stubby arms, holding her close as he raced through the courtyard, surrounded by Michael Kors and Gucci, but what did it matter in the face of this, in the face of a father and his child, running around for the sheer joy of it, wind in their hair and glee on their faces, running and dancing and whooping and twirling and laughing, laughing with such unabashed joy, like happiness was a birthright and by god, would they claim it.
Like happiness was a birthright, and by god, we should claim it.
~Sam
