in the garden's (spot)light

Lovely evening with SK. We sat in silence on a blanket in the park during the last of the dying afternoon. She flipped through a magazine while I studied all the breeders, brooding over their profligate children. Children everywhere, running around, and parents standing here and there like cones, watching, watching. I'm starting to realize the parents are in my peer group -- or what *would* be my peer group if I was on a slightly different path in life. These parents -- some are even younger than me. It is strange to identify with the parents now and not the kids.

I watched also a group of three teenagers as they played among the smaller kids. They were young, maybe 14, two boys and a girl. They had an easy physicality and SK and I agreed that they looked like kids who'd grown up playing together, who had suddenly grown into adult bodies together, suddenly aware of each other in such a new way. The boys were lanky and sweet and vied for the girl's attention. The girl had an athelete's build and wore soccer shorts with her hair up, she did not seem to have a favorite and she played and wrestled with them both with equal joy and fierce abandon. They were sweet. They swung on the sings, hung from the monkey bars and wresteled in the grass before finally laying down together, all in a row, looking up into the sky and pointing at clouds. I could've watched them for hours, they were so sweet together.

I, of course, shellacked the scene with a thick crust of melancholy. I thought how happy they are now, how together they are, and I imagined this summer as their last summer in such happy freedom. Something will happen amongst them all, together and separately, they will become sexual, they will become involved in adult-seeming-intrigues, their social worlds will get complicated, they will drink or use drugs or they will avoid drinking or using drugs, they will grow apart, they will change. They will look back and remember this as their favorite summer. Their happiest time.

When the sun went behind the hills it got cooler and SK and I packed up our blanket and walked back to her house. We ate supper and watched the third bad movie in a row and SK is now forbidden to choose movies for the time being. Afterwards, feeling a little restless and melancholy (both of us) SK suggested we share a Guinesse and sit in the garden. SK's garden is a tiny, lush strip behind her apartment which has been planted with irises and poppies and the remnants of daffodills all, now, tied up and laid aside. The strip is also full of ferns and pots with tomatoes and tiny seedling starts of basil, arugala and the thousand sunflowers SK is planning to grow this year. The garden, such as it is, is lovely.

The downfall are the spotlights which are beyond our control and which shine from other apartments. They make the garden look a little like a movie set, lit for the filming of an urban garden scene. Aside from the glare in my eyes, the lights actually give the garden at night an ethereal feel and they cast a sort of heavenly halo around SK who was looking particularly gorgeous in her new shirt and her mild melancholy. She rolled a cigarette and smoked it, exhaling roughly through her nostrils. This is a side of SK I find mysterious and intriguing -- the SK who rolls a cigarette and smokes it in the garden. I stared and stared at her last night, completely smitten, taken, crushed out and awe struck. I felt like I'd stepped back to a time before I knew SK as well as I do now, to a time before our courtship, before our first date, before any of it, back to a time when I only just watched SK from afar and wondered about her and sought her out and pursued her. When she was, in many ways, more object to me than dynamic person. I watched her like a worshipper last night. It was disorienting. But, also, gorgeous.