any given monday

the following is what i reflected on 26 may 2003 (and wrote).

it's valentine's day (2003) and i am in salta hearing piano music, watching the pigeons, alone in Plaza 9 de Julio. it's somewhere between 3pm and 6pm and i've been sitting here some time observing the courting rituals of the pigeons. a stage is set up in one of the corners and someone is playing a piano over a loudspeaker. they're chasing each other over where one man is sitting while his children throw corn kernels and run around the birds. three land at once on the horse's tail, one is on the leg. and i am alone. like nearly every february 14th in my life. i have either been alone, or been doing something boring or traumatizing where i would better have been alone. and i decide that this day is the only day of the year where i am allowed to be depressed. that was an actual thought; now that i remember how tool-ish that is, i don't do that, it's stupid to allow yourself to be depressed. it's just something that comes and goes, and one deals with it.

The piano player continues while the kids in the park are trying to sell their flowers for a peso each. deep in thought about the pigeons, one interrupts me with a message that the guy on the bench over there wanted to give this to me. i look behind me and the kid's co-conspirators are trying to convince the guy on the bench to buy me one. he looks like a tourist, and not at all interested in buying a flower. a slight laugh but i am still thinking. i want to call him. but i don't want to interfere with any plans he may have made with the girl he told me about the last time i saw him. did he see the disappointment in my face? i know all that time i tried so hard to keep my body language in step with what i was feeling. they used to say that my face hides nothing. so did he see the color fall out of my eyes when he told me about her? i pretended like i was OK with it, besides, what could i have expected?

but i wasn't OK. so today i find myself alone and reminiscing about the one real romance i ever had, in the very same place many parts of it occurred. the clouds have now all but covered the sun, so i move to the old Cafe Regidor, (this was my favorite place; the last time i was in salta though, july 2003, it was already closed and boarded up), site of one of the final scenes in my little romance. back then he knew to find me there. there's a table of raspy-voiced middle-aged women, one on her cell phone while the others have coffee and smoke at the table next to mine. i'm at a table in a back corner next to the open window, and have now begun to read "david copperfield." i order the usual tea and toast, and try to get back to my book. but i look at the door and can't help thinking about that day, it was like i was the princess; i had come to the cafe by myself because i had to get some work done and then slowly the cafe began to fill itself with most of the other people from our group. so we all have a couple-hour-long chat i guess and slowly they start to leave, only he walks through the door. as if he knew where to find me. i don't remember much else about that day, what we did afterwards nor where even to place it in the sequence of events that make up this sad little story. just the fact that he knew where to find me has stuck out in my memory these two years.

returning to the table from the door, my tea has arrived and i spread the mermelada de durazno on my toast while staring out the window. through my mind run idle eating thoughts: what this woman outside is wearing, the cafe across the street with the cute tables outside, i should try it sometime. the dirty child from the plaza who has now come to stand in front of the open window.

i've nearly finished my toast with a thing of mermelada to spare, and the dirty child has realized this. dodging the plant outside, he crawls through the open window and approaches my table. i try to shoo him away but he asks if i have any food left over and, feeling sorry, i say he can have my jam. in saying this i expect him to take it and leave, but instead he sits down next to me, grabs my spoon, and opens and finishes the packet in two spoonfuls. somewhat astonished i say nothing as he thanks me and crawls back through the open window. at least the dirty child had manners enough to eat the jam with a spoon! and i return to my reading.

i'm now walking back to the hostel with my head down, unaware of the fact that whenever i am sad i walk with my head down without realizing it. tonight, ironically, i will go out to eat with the kids from the hostel to La Vieja Estación, site of the first date we had. site of the last vestige of the innocence of my prefious life, before he kissed me.

it's just another monday. i don't really feel like spending it making out with nostalgia, so i won't. but something must be said about the history of this day in my life.

8th grade: i am babysitting our neighbors and the phone rings. the girls have brushed lip gloss through my hair and i have just finished washing it. it is Laura on the phone, who tells me that steph has just found her brother hanging himself with a belt in his basement.

2002: not that it was bad - i was with two of my good friends from my physics class. juan and paco. we were studying for an exam. we started in the physics building. then we went to pizza hut. then we went to my apt, and continued studying till i don't remember when. paco left at one. juan stayed till...? of course it was only studying. there may have been flirting but i was too innocent to realize it at the time.

2004: my boyfriend at the time is in argentina with his dying mother. we had made plans to see each other this weekend, but later that night my phone rings and it's him telling me the news. that was the hardest thing ever - we hadn't been together that long, and i'd never dealt with anyone whose mother was dying.

i guess the moral of the story is that as long as i can keep this day neutral, it's good. i went to the gym, thinking that it's Tool's day and so it wouldn't be crowded, and it wasn't. there actually was an overabundance of good looking young men. and my dentist, whom i successfully avoided.

quote of the day: "i will never be a tool to Big Tobacco or to Big Gift Company." me, said to Miss V at work. i am trying hard not to be overly cynical or depreesd or bitter, and for the most part i'm not. i was tempted to go to jewel and look for more pistacio ice cream, but then i thought of how stereotypical that is - a single girl eating ice cream alone on valentine's day. how tool-ish. i am not a tool.