spellbound no more

He stood a block from where he had seen her last and thought
¨This is where I saw her last.¨
The spell had lifted finally and his mind flowed with flighty dreams and a flood of language bound liberation. His suffering had borne fruit after all. Her charisma was no different than before, of course her heart had moved on and he vainly and selfishly wished only to bask in her charm for a moment, like a deep canyon flower that only sees the sun an hour a day. Her lips and voice should be declared a national treasure, her face representing all of Mexican lust. at first he was repulsed with how cosmopolitan she had become but as he was accustomed to realizing that his loathing was for himself, not her, and the way he was purchasing $300 ebony and rosewood guitar accessories with mother of pearl inlay. was that any different than Kipling bags and eyeliner applied with blatant casual indifference?
The flood of language he had waited for and dreamed about during the terrible term of his haunted love had finally arrived. He spun a mental tale like a Dennis Leary acid trip into magical circles of lunacy in front of him that made him laugh with delight. He was not Ashley to her Scarlett, like he´d initially thought, but he was Scarlett, independent and romantic and perhaps she was also Scarlett and they were both in love with their own ideas of love projected onto one another, her for a few days or hours, and he for  4 years...and this kind of mental recreation was the material he would need to dissect in order to move to the next level of creative production. Her heart had moved on, as he knew, but his poet´s core needed more convincing...and now he´d been convinced. His emotional shadow was no longer an orphan. She´d kissed him goodbye, off to high society Rome, and he to his destiny with immortal drama.
Men strode past in dirty trousers, women in new high heels, children in curious delight at the world, taking no notice of Oggy as he became reacquainted with the small corner, el rincon, of his heart that had been left behind, trapped behind her imaginary grasping designer jeans. ¨So, this is what it feels like to be complete.¨ The spell was lifted and he had reunited a portion of his consciousness with its other majority. Yes, one thing had been missing from his travels to Labrador and the distant corners of the continent, the darkness in the van, the scolding lights of the police, the drunks and degenerates decaying in a world of excess, but it wasn´t her, as he´d dreamed because her memory was worn to a high polish in his lazy brain, but it was him...his own unified heart and trust in the nature that had led him to the brink of continents and walking on crust of subducted grief. He had been incomplete and her presence was not the answer but it was the easiest excuse and the most romantically inclined to fulfill the desire of completion, the distant mother, the absent affection from his adult life, the cruelties of the world represented in the scolding glances and hurtful remarks of women who had stolen covers and snored and thrown his own humility in his face. He was a boxer with a long memory of low blows, resentment failing to protect him from the disgrace of his own futility and the invulnerable insecurity that had torn his soul asunder intentionally to provide and excuse to keep others at arm´s length.
The rich soil of his analysis would reveal the seeds of creativity and provide the nutrition his spirit needed. He was complete again....and was his education over? He wanted to believe that he had made the last of this genre of mistake...wasn´t it time to move on? He was a writer because he wrote and composed and lived as a writer would...and the trance needed to compose had been an oasis of serenity during his tortured years away from her. But now that the spell had been lifted he felt the dam of emotions he´d failed to transcribe already waiting overhead to be drawn in cement. Writing is described as duck hunting where you wait for the moment to shoot. Now all he saw were the multitude of ducks that had been there all along, but hidden by his grieving poet´s heart. A man couldn´t be more devoted and faithful to a woman than he had been to her ghost...and it had come to nothing...an empty wrapper...adios...so he´d felt the continent shift beneath his feet and incrementally his vision had been resurrected.
He now knew why the cowboys in the old songs never simply went back to Mexico to see the girl with the gardenia in her hair. Because the song would never be written. Romance is unrequited, longing from afar. Reality is the swift kick of denial that has no rhyming words.

He walked slowly by an old building and saw a poster about pianos...?
Que?
Pianos?
He went in and immediately recognized the pianos from the Triunfo museum where he and Nicolas had bonded in the desert as he fumbled through a Beethoven Sonata and Nicolas ripped through a Chopin Etude, near the abandoned gold mind...symbolic of the beginning and end of his own futile mining operations into her heart.
The pianos had been moved following the death of Nicolas.
Lo Siento
The man invited him in with courteous, Mexican hospitality.

He browsed and saw a single sheet of old music on a 100 year old Kimball piano...¨Las Cuatros Milpas¨ so he sat and played the simple Mexican cancion.
Pedestrians outside heard the music and smiled, holding hands tighter, but they didn´t see the tears on his face as he realized he wasn´t playing the song for Her anymore, no it was for life and the gift he´d been denied...but had pretended was his..but was now actually his again. The cycle had completed. Fortune had smiled on him. The spell was lifted. Goodbye to her, his love, may she have the time of her life with him, and hello to his heart that had been reunited, returning on a long journey, to where it belonged and in the uncertain soil of reality and not the virtual furrows he´d invented. He played the Mexican waltz and the song carried into the zocalo near the church. The carnival celebration was resounding outside but no one bothered the gringo at the old piano as he played the simple Mexican melody and cried.





Later, Oggy went back and was denied the opportunity to record this song. Alas.