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There is a girl I know, or sort of know, or, more accurately, I’ve barely known for eight years. I know that I had encounters with her at least that long ago, although for the first four, these encounters were brief enough and left little enough impression that I never even learned her name. Later, enough of my friends knew of her and had referred to her that I gradually got to know who was being spoken of, although to this day I still am inclined to confuse her with other Allisons I barely know.
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Well, a couple of Sunday’s ago, we met again, for probably the first time in two years, at a friend of mine’s house to go and see the movie ‘Four Feathers’. I noted that she was cute, though not flooring, dressed casually but smartly. Her dark clothes, dark hair and quiet, but crisp and light hearted demeanor reminded me of those parts of myself that remind me of early autumn. And, coincidentally, that was an early autumn day, with the sun still warm, but the air dry, with all of the birds which were fleeing south adding the bird version of walking through fall leaves, not loud, not overbearing, just crisp, clean, refreshing, realization. Autumn may symbolize death and decay, but it also includes the good parts of culmination, wisdom, enlightenment, contentment, peace after struggle, and on that day, to me, Allison symbolized these things as well. She did it well, blending into that perfect day as if it had embodied itself in her person, as if she were the template, the scion, the avatar of ‘the perfect fall day’ and I felt that reflected through me until I was also the perfect fall day, and we three became, unintentionally and unknowingly, one being for a time.
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I have no idea whether she is single right now or not, but to me, that day, she was unattached in any romantic sense, and she was, in that same ‘true because I’ve decided it will be true for now despite the evidence against it’ sense, the first single woman I’ve spoken to in years other than my sister. She said, as we finally got around to speaking directly to one another, "Hi, Mike, Remember me?", even though I was amazed that she remembered who I was, and we traded the simplest of small talk, but for me I was trading secrets with magi, the occupation of this one dubiously single woman worth, just to hear it, access to the guarded notes for every alchemical formula or obscure ritual I had so painstakingly collected and hoarded in my time.
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We went to the theatre and she ended up sitting next to me and we laughed and mocked the previews together and then were separated by the darkness and the film, but every second of that time felt wonderful, and when she and her friend left it was difficult to see that perfect autumn day diminished.
If this sounds like your standard single male crush, or ‘love at first sight’, it’s not. Yes, she was attractive, and charming, and were I to be certain of her single status, not leaving the country in a month, and not a craven coward in matters romantic, I’d probably take the leap and ask her out. But that has nothing to do with what I’m writing about here.
If this sounds like merely the sort of experience a lonely, single Mike would have when he finally gets to talk to briefly to someone who he finds attractive and who he doesn’t already know and who’s marital status is actually open to question, well, that’s a minor part of it, but that’s not really what I’m writing about, either.
It’s the little things that can become big, the tiny details that suddenly balloon into all important ones, the underlying aspects of reality that turn out to be the essential bonding element, the very basis of the stereotype, the myth. For a rare moment, I watched a girl and a day and myself through them attain a kind of perfection, and I shared with her the simplest of things, but the simplest things that I’d taken for granted for so long, and when I finally noticed them, they became everything, and although, in all likelihood, they meant nothing to us, or her, they meant everything to me, and for this Allison resides forever fondly in my memory.
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