Evensong

Yesterday: late afternoon, late June. The summer being at its blistering best, vicissitudinal music and a lilting tune...

From behind a grey-blue year long curtain of rain, my best friend had emerged: Verlaine. It pains me deeply that he hasn't found a mention on this blog yet. Verlaine and I, we have been inseparable since infancy and circumstance. Ah circumstance! How many times have I traced your peaks and troughs with my fingers, your very variability, your precisions and divisions... A dull acceptance have I learned off of your quirks.

Yesterday: late afternoon, late June. It was just a day, dull and laden with vacationable ennui. Yet anxiety niggled away at the base of my brain, playing the trapeze artist with my brain stem. I always get all hot and bothered before meeting Verlaine, our lives have drifted apart so much that I wonder if we have anything left to say to one another. Each time have I been proven wrong resoundingly, yet each time I am still a little bewildered.

The evening was stretched out against the sky, and I dressed in a worrisome way: why was I so worried?! It's ridiculous! I have known him all my life! Nothing has changed! The dynamic still exists...Dear God!

I stepped into the mall where our fashionable cup of coffee was supposed to take place and, in time, I saw him. Resplendent in red, he greeted me warmly and my fears vapourised. Of course, I have a penchant for botching things up...I gave him an awkward hand-shake! He took it in his stride and we made our way to La Gaufrette. Conversation was easy, quirky, dark, hilarious and, frankly, unchanged. What I find best about my conversations with Verlaine is that we slip right back into the scheme of things very, very easily. Suddenly, that one whole year compressed itself into an errant comma that places itself in a conversation because, just for a minute, something else had to be attended to, and now we're back and talking as if we'd never stopped talking.

There was time for laughter. We laughed a lot. That is what I remember most: full-throated laughter, very unlike the politically correct chuckles that befit our age. Laughter, slicing its way through a thick mist of disillusionment; meticulously scripted deceptions; love, bitter as chocolate; sex, sweet as nectar, the irony of therapy: a monumental rhapsody, set to the strains of laughter. And then there was time for Earl Grey and Mocha with sides of quirk, caprice, mousse and carrot cake:"This mousse. It isn't very good." said Verlaine at one point-

And so the conversation slips Among velleities and carefully caught regrets Through attenuated tones of violins Mingled with remote cornets And begins.

I had missed him. The full weight of how much I had came crashing down on me as the evening drew to a close. We hugged this time, as we probably would have when we met if I hadn't done that ridiculous hand-shake! The evening, it was still stretched out against the sky. A tedious dinner event (that, after this therapeutic rekindling, appeared to me an empty, soul-sucking monster of empty, soul-sucking conversation) waited for my attention. God O God! I wanted to go home and luxuriate in this feeling of overwhelming peace that came from knowing that I still retained that part of my soul which would resurrect itself in Verlaine's presence. Mollified by the sheer decadence of our talk and laughter, I wanted to go home and think of the world, having talked about it for the past 3 hours:

We, that do chisel words like chalices,
And moving verses shape with unmoved mind,
Whom wandering in groups by evening seas,
In musical converse ye scarce shall find,—


Until the next time,
GossipGuy!