Safely nestled into Saturday afternoon, I thought I would write you about Saturday mornings. I can't think of the perfect analogy for the joy they bring me, but here's the closest I've come: Saturday mornings are to the week what the smell of onions sauteing downstairs is to waking up from a nap -- you're not quite sure what you've done to deserve it, and you almost never remember how good it is until it happens again. So goes my Saturday.
Daylight has switched to it's autumn routine here, which means that five days out of the week I wake up in darkness and get dressed in half-light. Not until I leave the house can it properly be called daytime. This is fine, because after leaving the house I've still got another hour of commuting before I need to form coherent English sentences. But let me tell you, after five days of waking up to the tail end of nighttime, there is nothing like being woken up by daylight. Open window. Prop too-long book on my belly. Scrunch down under the covers. Read.
The best past hasn't even started yet. After a couple chapters of Russian military strategy and social climbing, the sound of a wandering accordionist floats through the open window. These men (I've only seen men doing this so far) wander slowly around the streets on weekend mornings playing what I am forced to imagine are the most beautiful Greek love ballads ever written. As far as I can tell their main goal is to tug at the heart-strings of people clinging to the last haze of sleep. Today and a week ago, this music has been the first thing to compel me out of bed. I've fallen in love with an old accordionist from four stories up.
In conjunction with my Saturday morning swoon, here is this from Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino:
When a man rides a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city. Finally he comes to Isidora, a city where the buildings have spiral staircases encrusted with spiral seashells, where perfect telescopes and violins are made, where the foreigner hesitating between two women always encounters a third, where cockfights degenerate into bloody brawls among the bettors. He was thinking of all these things when de desired a city. Isidora, therefore, is a city of his dreams: with one difference. The dreamed-of city contained him as a young man; he arrives in Isidora in his old age. In the square there is a wall where the old men sit and watch the young go by; he is seated in a row with them. Desires are already memories.
Happy remembering.
No comments:
Post a Comment