Pretty Lady

This post was part of the 300words experiment. Since I usually took one day off for ‘Sabbath’, there were times I would write 600 words about a particular person. This lovely woman has been in my life for over fifteen years, and plays an integral part in my story.
As you can tell by the date-stamp, this post is early on in my exploration of writing about myself. It’s campy, and a bit overly enthusiastic. But I learned about myself writing about her. I think in many ways that practice here is making my writing more perfectly me. Sure, this is all over the place, but it’s true. So I’ll freshen it up, and perhaps provide a few more details about this moment, then we’ll see what we can see.

The first time I saw her, I must admit, my perception was a bit skewed. Now, that probably had to do with the fact that I was in some of those ‘college experimental’ times, and the reality was that the whole world was very pretty, extraordinarily shiny, and hyper colourful. Take that as you will. I was sitting with a friend at the weekly Saturday party at the Woolsey House in Berkeley (known for its attraction of Goths, dosers, drinkers, Rocky fans, and various other non-traditional party people). I looked up and saw a woman emerge from the kitchen in a long flowing dress, and I thought two things. First, she looked like an angel. Second, she looked sad. I wasn’t sure if she was real, so I asked my friend, “Who’s that? She’s so pretty but she looks so sad!” He responded, “That’s Faith. She is a little sad.” So my instant response was, “Well, then we should fix that.” So we did. I never would have imagined that evening that fixing that would involve a sneaky undercover operation to break into her previous apartment in order to steal a cat, or a princess and the pea bed that would be halfway to the ceiling in a small apartment, or all the various other adventures that we went on, but it did.

As time went on, as it always does, we began to go separate ways. She got all responsible and I went a bit mad. We would bump into each other at various times with mutual friends, but I can still remember the first time I eversaw her fire-dance. Faith is an exquisitely and exceptionally beautiful woman, with a striking figure and some of the most long, amazing hair you’ve ever seen. When she lights those poi on fire, it’s a hypnotic thing. It was a friend’s wedding, and the evening was full of life and love and friendship. And then Faith – who had seemed very distant, started to dance. It was as if the fire had a life of its own. At times it would send little flickers of itself off into the night sky, to float up and away. At other times, she would be surrounded by a blazing halo of the retinal after-burn of the flames. But it reminded me of that beautiful, sad lady I first saw. It reminded me of how I knew the moment that I saw her that I loved her and wanted her to be happy.
When she came to Dublin, we had so many good adventures. It was like time had rewound and all those years had come racing back. And I remember sitting in Doolin, in McGann’s Pub, just laughing and enjoying each other. And having one too many pints. And having to saunter vaguely homewards with Wingnut the cat. And we looked up at the stars and the moon, and the world between us was right all over again.