This isn't poetry-like for a change. It's a short-story about art and love in Vigeland Park in Oslo, Norway. The story is completely imagination, but the places mentioned exists. I've put this story on deviantart too, but I'll also share it here.
A reality-based personality, that was what my friends called me. It was meant as innocent teasing, but I found it to be true. I wasn't the type of girl to daydream for hours or watching stars and wishing on them. I found wishing to be unnecessary, stupid even, one had to live in this reality anyway. One had to grow up, get a job or study and life was just a matter of living through page after page filled with boredom. My approach to reality was highly appreciated by my mum who had quickly got tired of my sister's more creative ways. My sister was three years older and loved fairytales, daydreaming and chasing butterflies. She was in her own little world most of the time and was always told to pay attention to the more important things in life something she didn't quite manage. I was the exact opposite, always listening, studying and with a serious approach that my teachers were most fond of. They bragged about me when they met my mother and she then complained to my sister about being different.
"You should be more like your sister," she said and then my sister got hurt while I felt a bizarre feeling of joy. I feel that it's a tiny bit justifiable, because when you are a child you often feel an urge to compete with your siblings, to be the better one. Anyway my sister and mine relationship got a bit strained because of this and our contact gradually become less and less. She was with her friends, daydreamers like her and they discussed books and self written stories with bottles of meaning or so they said. I grew up myself and had my friends and my own life. I left to live by myself just a few weeks past my eighteenth birthday, feeling very much grown-up and on the top of the world. I was truly reality-based and yet it was me who saw him.
I went to the park once every week with my sister. A few years had passed and my sister and my relationship had grown a little bit better, but we still had things we never discussed. My mothers treatment of us when we were kids had hurt my sister and I felt a bit sorry for her now. It wasn't the bizarre happiness I'd had in my childhood or that endless feeling of competing, but still it was a bit strained. We met one day each week and went to the park together. It was a bit like those games you play as a child were you pretend to be something else. We pretended to be friends. Today was a sunny, beautiful day and we went to the park in the early afternoon. It was a Thursday, but it felt like a Sunday, silent and slow moving, but nice anyhow. My sister was watching the sculptures in awe and had the same look as when she was a child, youthful and eager.
"I've always loved this place," she said. It has something eternal about it, like it will last forever." I watched her as she spoke, but didn't know what to say. She was right or so I thought, but I couldn't say so. That would be like giving in to that world of imagination that I'd always tried to escape from. Maybe of fear, fear of believing and then be disappointed. "What do you think?," said my sister and I shrugged my shoulders.
"I don't know, it's nice I guess," I answered or my lips answered. I wasn't entirely sure about what I was saying. My sister, which by the way is named Molly, sent me a look, as if she was hoping that I would say something more elaborate and thoughtful, but when I didn't she looked away, at the ground, disappointed. She kicked a tiny rock laying there before her as we walked on. I felt a bit like a betrayer, but didn't say anything. I wasn't ready to change. We walked across the bridge and my sister Molly stopped to look at most of the sculptures we saw. She stopped extra long at the sculpture of the Angry little boy which had always been her favourite. I, myself, didn't like it that much. It was an angry child which probably hadn't been taught nice behaviour from his parents and was angry at his parents. He was stupid, if he'd only explained his feelings in words it would be all better. I suddenly registered what I was thinking and felt totally stupid. It was a sculpture and child psychology was unneeded. Molly had walked on with her youth like enthusiasm and I guessed that I should keep walking too. So I walked, but slowly. As the bridge was ending I saw a man, not far away from me. He was sitting on the ground on a blanket and for some reason I started to wonder. What was he doing? I went closer and saw that he was drawing. He was an artist.
***
Picture a man with dark curls and a brown coat that was a bit too large. Picture him drawing on as you stand behind him watching, not even turning when he understands that you're there. You don't see his face, but you somehow get a feeling that he's smiling. Because of the sculpture, because of you or because of the sky which is a clear blue and amazingly wonderful. I watched him as he drew and got more and more impressed. It wasn't that it looked that much alike, no there were central differences, details and such, but it looked so alive. He somehow made the sculpture come to life.
"Are you coming?" It was Molly. She was standing impatiently some seven or so meters in front of me and seemed very ready to keep going. I slowly walked on while turning to watch the artist a few times and on my third turn he himself turned to send me a smile which made me warm inside. I couldn't see why, but I wanted to see him again.
***
The next week went slowly. I had troubles concentrating, something that has never been typical of me. I work through it quickly and then I sit there waiting for others to catch up, or so it used to be. This week was an entirely different thing. My mind was a mess and somehow I kept thinking of the artist in the park, drawing as if it was what he was born to do. My boss brought attention to this on the fourth day of the week. He brought me into his office and asked me straight-out what was going on.
"You have seemed distanced this week," he said. "Is everything ok? This isn't like you." Oh boy, was he right. And that worried me. I didn't want to change or lose all I had worked for.
"I'm sorry," I said truthfully. "It has just been a weird week."
"It's understandable," he told me after having sent me a look of consideration, "but you have to get up to scratch. I can't afford people that doesn't take this seriously."
"I'll get better. I promise," I said and meant it and the next two days had me giving my one hundred percent of work willingness. But still it was a bit of a battle and I felt truly grateful when Sunday came along.
Molly and I went once again to the park, but I had this smile on my face which made Molly give me weird looks.
"Why are you smiling?," she asked. Then she run at me and dragged at my face.
"It's a mask," she screamed. "It's a mask. My sister have been kidnapped and I'm very much afraid!" I laughed and pushed her away.
"Is it so special that I'm happy?," I said.
"No, but you're practically glowing and that's so not like you," Molly answered and I thought about this. I didn't want to seem like an angry, boring or controlling person and now it occurred to me that I often was just that. I walked on lost in thoughts. Both Molly and I stopped a few times just to watch the sculptures. We had seen them thousands of times before, but in art you always find something new. Today I found both new things and stuff that I'd noticed but forgotten. I felt like I was watching everything with new eyes, but I couldn't see why. And I couldn't see why I pictured him.
The day went quickly and I left the park with new knowledge, but also a sense of disappointment. The artist wasn't there.
***
The next few weeks he was gone and I started to wonder if he had been real. For all I knew, he could have been a vision or a dream. But I somehow hoped he was real, I wanted him to be. I also wanted him to bring drawings to life once more. I had almost given up on him when I saw him again. I was walking through the park one day after work and without Molly. It was a beautiful day with the glow of sunshine everywhere, between the trees and lightening up the sculptures around me and I felt privileged to be a part of it. I walked across the park, not stopping at all before I ended up next to the sculpture he had drawn. I couldn't draw very well myself, but I took up my notebook and a pencil from my bag anyway and started drawing it. At first it felt weird to be drawing again, I hadn't really drawn for years, but then I got into it and as my drawing became more and more complete I lost track of time and the world around me. I only came back to reality when I heard a man say, "nice drawing." I turned and found out that the artist hadn't been a dream, I never dreamt the same things twice. I become even more sure that he was real when I pinched my over arm and it was uncomfortable. He looked at me with a look of surprise, but didn't say anything about it. I stood up and looked at him.
"You," I said and quickly felt stupid. "I saw you drawing a while ago. It was really pretty." With that said I looked down at the ground because I felt sure I was blushing and I didn't want him to see that. I felt like I was a teen having a crush on a boy in the year above or the handsome teacher that unfortunately was too old and taken. He didn't seem to notice though and just said "thank you" as if he was genuinely surprised to hear that his art was good. When I looked up from the ground I could see a smile playing on his face.
"I have seen you here a few times before with another girl..."
"...My sister," I said interrupting him. Then I realised what I'd done and said a sincere "sorry". He wasn't bothered, at least it didn't seem that way. Instead he went on talking.
"Your sister, alright. She always seemed so playful and simple to understand, but you was a mystery. I've always wanted to figure you out." Now I knew I was blushing. I also knew that I should have felt angry about him calling my sister simple, but he also had called me a mystery and I'd never been called that before.
"It's probably not so hard to figure me out," I said impulsively. "I'm really boring and uninteresting. It's the truth, I am." I felt betrayed by my lips. Now I'd probably made the impression of a childish insecure girl, not a young sophisticated woman, which was how I wanted to seem. But yet again he didn't care.
"I don't think you're boring. I think you seem real," he said and I knew that I could fall for this man like that, with the snap of a finger. This I didn't say of course.
"I always like to draw this sculpture," he told me, changing the subject.
"It's something special about it. Maybe that is the subject, the parent and the child."
"Maybe."
We watched the sculpture and he sat down to draw it once again. I watched and it was so beautiful that my eyes filled up. I wiped it away quickly. The drawing came to life step by step, every stroke made it more real. Finally he wrote his name underneath it. "Antonio Bezel" it said, with a delicate cursive print. Then he ripped out the page from his sketchbook and gave it to me.
"Here, this is for... What is your name by the way?"
I answered him, "Andrea."
"I'm Antonio."
***
We met in the park a few times after that. It was never planned and it was never on Sundays with Molly by my side. She always asked me about what I was doing so often in the park because it slipped out that I had been to the park a few times lately without her. I just smiled and kept walking and watching with a big smile on my face. This went on for a while, but it all changed as a new Sunday came in the beginning of autumn, September. It was raining and Molly and I walked trough the park once again. She had actually mentioned some other places we could visit, the park had started to bore her, but I got her onto my side in the end and we ended up in the park in the end. Molly was carrying an oversize yellow umbrella and sniffled a few times signalling the beginning of a cold. I was umbrella-less and smiling at the clouds, pretending to be Gene Kelly in "Singin in the Rain." Molly had started to get used to this new me, the smiling and daydreaming me, so much like herself. "There is always hope," she had said an earlier Sunday while looking at me and it was true. Even realists like me could become happy dreamers. I never mentioned Antonio though. It would make it seem like I was in love or something and of course I wasn't. I just thought Antonio was great at drawing and friendly to and his handsomeness, curly hair, blue eyes which mirrored the sky and a pretty smile was just a bonus. As I always did when I was in the park, I looked after him and in the end I saw him, drawing as usual. He looked up and saw me and went straight to me to say "hello."
I thought about hiding beneath my sister or something cause I felt a little worried that he would meet me with my sister next to me. It would give the wrong impression.
"I'm Antonio," he informed my sister. "I have met Andrea in the park a few times."
"Oh?," Molly said and sent me a weird look.
"She is a pleasant person," Antonio told and very comfortable and l blushed while my sister got a knowing smile.
"My sister, the pleasant person," Molly teased when Antonio had gone back to his spot drawing. "Is it love I smell in the autumn-breeze, is it fairytales in the sun?"
"Stop," I said. "It's nothing like that. We just talk and I watch him draw."
"Yeah right," was my sisters response to that, but she didn't continue her teasing. Yet I could sense the words laying ready on her tongue and I hoped hard that they wouldn't slip. They weren't needed anyway. It was nothing but a friendship, barely even that. We went past the sculptures and I imagined stories behind them. The mass of beings in the Monolith were probably competing to get on top, first person to reach the sky would win. Secretly I'd always had this image of sculptures as trolls trapped in the sunlight and forever imprisoned in stone. It was a remnant of the stories I'd heard as a child and tried so hard to pay no attention what-so-ever too, I was a child of reality, wasn't I? But lately all the fairytales had come back to me and my imagination was a roller coaster which wouldn't stop, but kept on, not letting me catch my breath. Before I knew it we started to get out again, Molly's phone had rang and she was meeting a friend for coffee at on of Oslo's many cafeterias. She asked if I wanted to come with, but I told her that I had to go home. Then we went separate ways and I was about to start on my journey home, but then I heard my name.
"Andrea." It was Antonio and I turned quickly, too quickly, I wasn't sure.
"What is it?," I asked.
"I wondered if you were free to come. I had plans to go to the nearest Mac Donald's to get something to eat and it nice to do that together with someone..."
In my mind I may have somehow registered that he in some way was asking me out, but then I just said "okay" and didn't think more of it and we walked out of the park together.
***
To walk next to him to a Mac Donald's didn't feel weird or special. In fact it felt completely natural and as if it was how it should be. Sitting across him at a square table with chips and a coke in front of me and burger and coke in front of him also seemed completely natural.
"You're a coke-person too, I see," Antonio said, stating a fact, not asking a question.
"Yes, always Coca Cola, you know!"
He smiled at my answer and then we ate in silence while sending glances across the table. He really looked very handsome. After five minutes or maybe more, I didn't keep track of time, he talked once more.
"Is it some kind of deal you have, you and you're sister. You have to visit the park once a week or something?"
"Well, kind of," I started and then I told him everything, about how my mom had favoured me for being more realistic, about how it had drained our relationship, basically the whole story. He listened and seemed interested and I felt so glad to finally get things of my chest.
"I think it should be a mix," he said when I were finished. "I think that one should find a balance between daydreams and reality. It seems like people often chooses to be one of the two because they are afraid of going to far the other way, if you see what I mean?"
I understood exactly what he meant. In some way he had managed to explain the problem I'd had my whole life in just a few sentences. That was something I found amazing and I think my face told that cause he smiled knowingly. We talked away the evening and the clock must have been about 21:00 or something when it finally occurred to us that it was time to go home.
"I had a nice evening," Antonio said as we parted.
"Me too," I told him and as I walked home I thought to myself that it maybe was something to what Molly had said. Maybe, just maybe, I was in love...
***
Picture an artist drawing the rainbow as a bridge to eternity. Picture him drawing himself and you walking across it hand in hand and picture yourself waking up and knowing that it's Sunday and you'll surely walk through the park once more.
Short story by Karoline
Read 1119 times
Written on 2006-10-09 at 18:39
Tags Park Art Love
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Picture it
Picture a park in the heart of Oslo, filled with sculptures, each just as wonderful as the next. And picture a man drawing them, one for each day, bringing them to life. I never pictured it.A reality-based personality, that was what my friends called me. It was meant as innocent teasing, but I found it to be true. I wasn't the type of girl to daydream for hours or watching stars and wishing on them. I found wishing to be unnecessary, stupid even, one had to live in this reality anyway. One had to grow up, get a job or study and life was just a matter of living through page after page filled with boredom. My approach to reality was highly appreciated by my mum who had quickly got tired of my sister's more creative ways. My sister was three years older and loved fairytales, daydreaming and chasing butterflies. She was in her own little world most of the time and was always told to pay attention to the more important things in life something she didn't quite manage. I was the exact opposite, always listening, studying and with a serious approach that my teachers were most fond of. They bragged about me when they met my mother and she then complained to my sister about being different.
"You should be more like your sister," she said and then my sister got hurt while I felt a bizarre feeling of joy. I feel that it's a tiny bit justifiable, because when you are a child you often feel an urge to compete with your siblings, to be the better one. Anyway my sister and mine relationship got a bit strained because of this and our contact gradually become less and less. She was with her friends, daydreamers like her and they discussed books and self written stories with bottles of meaning or so they said. I grew up myself and had my friends and my own life. I left to live by myself just a few weeks past my eighteenth birthday, feeling very much grown-up and on the top of the world. I was truly reality-based and yet it was me who saw him.
I went to the park once every week with my sister. A few years had passed and my sister and my relationship had grown a little bit better, but we still had things we never discussed. My mothers treatment of us when we were kids had hurt my sister and I felt a bit sorry for her now. It wasn't the bizarre happiness I'd had in my childhood or that endless feeling of competing, but still it was a bit strained. We met one day each week and went to the park together. It was a bit like those games you play as a child were you pretend to be something else. We pretended to be friends. Today was a sunny, beautiful day and we went to the park in the early afternoon. It was a Thursday, but it felt like a Sunday, silent and slow moving, but nice anyhow. My sister was watching the sculptures in awe and had the same look as when she was a child, youthful and eager.
"I've always loved this place," she said. It has something eternal about it, like it will last forever." I watched her as she spoke, but didn't know what to say. She was right or so I thought, but I couldn't say so. That would be like giving in to that world of imagination that I'd always tried to escape from. Maybe of fear, fear of believing and then be disappointed. "What do you think?," said my sister and I shrugged my shoulders.
"I don't know, it's nice I guess," I answered or my lips answered. I wasn't entirely sure about what I was saying. My sister, which by the way is named Molly, sent me a look, as if she was hoping that I would say something more elaborate and thoughtful, but when I didn't she looked away, at the ground, disappointed. She kicked a tiny rock laying there before her as we walked on. I felt a bit like a betrayer, but didn't say anything. I wasn't ready to change. We walked across the bridge and my sister Molly stopped to look at most of the sculptures we saw. She stopped extra long at the sculpture of the Angry little boy which had always been her favourite. I, myself, didn't like it that much. It was an angry child which probably hadn't been taught nice behaviour from his parents and was angry at his parents. He was stupid, if he'd only explained his feelings in words it would be all better. I suddenly registered what I was thinking and felt totally stupid. It was a sculpture and child psychology was unneeded. Molly had walked on with her youth like enthusiasm and I guessed that I should keep walking too. So I walked, but slowly. As the bridge was ending I saw a man, not far away from me. He was sitting on the ground on a blanket and for some reason I started to wonder. What was he doing? I went closer and saw that he was drawing. He was an artist.
***
Picture a man with dark curls and a brown coat that was a bit too large. Picture him drawing on as you stand behind him watching, not even turning when he understands that you're there. You don't see his face, but you somehow get a feeling that he's smiling. Because of the sculpture, because of you or because of the sky which is a clear blue and amazingly wonderful. I watched him as he drew and got more and more impressed. It wasn't that it looked that much alike, no there were central differences, details and such, but it looked so alive. He somehow made the sculpture come to life.
"Are you coming?" It was Molly. She was standing impatiently some seven or so meters in front of me and seemed very ready to keep going. I slowly walked on while turning to watch the artist a few times and on my third turn he himself turned to send me a smile which made me warm inside. I couldn't see why, but I wanted to see him again.
***
The next week went slowly. I had troubles concentrating, something that has never been typical of me. I work through it quickly and then I sit there waiting for others to catch up, or so it used to be. This week was an entirely different thing. My mind was a mess and somehow I kept thinking of the artist in the park, drawing as if it was what he was born to do. My boss brought attention to this on the fourth day of the week. He brought me into his office and asked me straight-out what was going on.
"You have seemed distanced this week," he said. "Is everything ok? This isn't like you." Oh boy, was he right. And that worried me. I didn't want to change or lose all I had worked for.
"I'm sorry," I said truthfully. "It has just been a weird week."
"It's understandable," he told me after having sent me a look of consideration, "but you have to get up to scratch. I can't afford people that doesn't take this seriously."
"I'll get better. I promise," I said and meant it and the next two days had me giving my one hundred percent of work willingness. But still it was a bit of a battle and I felt truly grateful when Sunday came along.
Molly and I went once again to the park, but I had this smile on my face which made Molly give me weird looks.
"Why are you smiling?," she asked. Then she run at me and dragged at my face.
"It's a mask," she screamed. "It's a mask. My sister have been kidnapped and I'm very much afraid!" I laughed and pushed her away.
"Is it so special that I'm happy?," I said.
"No, but you're practically glowing and that's so not like you," Molly answered and I thought about this. I didn't want to seem like an angry, boring or controlling person and now it occurred to me that I often was just that. I walked on lost in thoughts. Both Molly and I stopped a few times just to watch the sculptures. We had seen them thousands of times before, but in art you always find something new. Today I found both new things and stuff that I'd noticed but forgotten. I felt like I was watching everything with new eyes, but I couldn't see why. And I couldn't see why I pictured him.
The day went quickly and I left the park with new knowledge, but also a sense of disappointment. The artist wasn't there.
***
The next few weeks he was gone and I started to wonder if he had been real. For all I knew, he could have been a vision or a dream. But I somehow hoped he was real, I wanted him to be. I also wanted him to bring drawings to life once more. I had almost given up on him when I saw him again. I was walking through the park one day after work and without Molly. It was a beautiful day with the glow of sunshine everywhere, between the trees and lightening up the sculptures around me and I felt privileged to be a part of it. I walked across the park, not stopping at all before I ended up next to the sculpture he had drawn. I couldn't draw very well myself, but I took up my notebook and a pencil from my bag anyway and started drawing it. At first it felt weird to be drawing again, I hadn't really drawn for years, but then I got into it and as my drawing became more and more complete I lost track of time and the world around me. I only came back to reality when I heard a man say, "nice drawing." I turned and found out that the artist hadn't been a dream, I never dreamt the same things twice. I become even more sure that he was real when I pinched my over arm and it was uncomfortable. He looked at me with a look of surprise, but didn't say anything about it. I stood up and looked at him.
"You," I said and quickly felt stupid. "I saw you drawing a while ago. It was really pretty." With that said I looked down at the ground because I felt sure I was blushing and I didn't want him to see that. I felt like I was a teen having a crush on a boy in the year above or the handsome teacher that unfortunately was too old and taken. He didn't seem to notice though and just said "thank you" as if he was genuinely surprised to hear that his art was good. When I looked up from the ground I could see a smile playing on his face.
"I have seen you here a few times before with another girl..."
"...My sister," I said interrupting him. Then I realised what I'd done and said a sincere "sorry". He wasn't bothered, at least it didn't seem that way. Instead he went on talking.
"Your sister, alright. She always seemed so playful and simple to understand, but you was a mystery. I've always wanted to figure you out." Now I knew I was blushing. I also knew that I should have felt angry about him calling my sister simple, but he also had called me a mystery and I'd never been called that before.
"It's probably not so hard to figure me out," I said impulsively. "I'm really boring and uninteresting. It's the truth, I am." I felt betrayed by my lips. Now I'd probably made the impression of a childish insecure girl, not a young sophisticated woman, which was how I wanted to seem. But yet again he didn't care.
"I don't think you're boring. I think you seem real," he said and I knew that I could fall for this man like that, with the snap of a finger. This I didn't say of course.
"I always like to draw this sculpture," he told me, changing the subject.
"It's something special about it. Maybe that is the subject, the parent and the child."
"Maybe."
We watched the sculpture and he sat down to draw it once again. I watched and it was so beautiful that my eyes filled up. I wiped it away quickly. The drawing came to life step by step, every stroke made it more real. Finally he wrote his name underneath it. "Antonio Bezel" it said, with a delicate cursive print. Then he ripped out the page from his sketchbook and gave it to me.
"Here, this is for... What is your name by the way?"
I answered him, "Andrea."
"I'm Antonio."
***
We met in the park a few times after that. It was never planned and it was never on Sundays with Molly by my side. She always asked me about what I was doing so often in the park because it slipped out that I had been to the park a few times lately without her. I just smiled and kept walking and watching with a big smile on my face. This went on for a while, but it all changed as a new Sunday came in the beginning of autumn, September. It was raining and Molly and I walked trough the park once again. She had actually mentioned some other places we could visit, the park had started to bore her, but I got her onto my side in the end and we ended up in the park in the end. Molly was carrying an oversize yellow umbrella and sniffled a few times signalling the beginning of a cold. I was umbrella-less and smiling at the clouds, pretending to be Gene Kelly in "Singin in the Rain." Molly had started to get used to this new me, the smiling and daydreaming me, so much like herself. "There is always hope," she had said an earlier Sunday while looking at me and it was true. Even realists like me could become happy dreamers. I never mentioned Antonio though. It would make it seem like I was in love or something and of course I wasn't. I just thought Antonio was great at drawing and friendly to and his handsomeness, curly hair, blue eyes which mirrored the sky and a pretty smile was just a bonus. As I always did when I was in the park, I looked after him and in the end I saw him, drawing as usual. He looked up and saw me and went straight to me to say "hello."
I thought about hiding beneath my sister or something cause I felt a little worried that he would meet me with my sister next to me. It would give the wrong impression.
"I'm Antonio," he informed my sister. "I have met Andrea in the park a few times."
"Oh?," Molly said and sent me a weird look.
"She is a pleasant person," Antonio told and very comfortable and l blushed while my sister got a knowing smile.
"My sister, the pleasant person," Molly teased when Antonio had gone back to his spot drawing. "Is it love I smell in the autumn-breeze, is it fairytales in the sun?"
"Stop," I said. "It's nothing like that. We just talk and I watch him draw."
"Yeah right," was my sisters response to that, but she didn't continue her teasing. Yet I could sense the words laying ready on her tongue and I hoped hard that they wouldn't slip. They weren't needed anyway. It was nothing but a friendship, barely even that. We went past the sculptures and I imagined stories behind them. The mass of beings in the Monolith were probably competing to get on top, first person to reach the sky would win. Secretly I'd always had this image of sculptures as trolls trapped in the sunlight and forever imprisoned in stone. It was a remnant of the stories I'd heard as a child and tried so hard to pay no attention what-so-ever too, I was a child of reality, wasn't I? But lately all the fairytales had come back to me and my imagination was a roller coaster which wouldn't stop, but kept on, not letting me catch my breath. Before I knew it we started to get out again, Molly's phone had rang and she was meeting a friend for coffee at on of Oslo's many cafeterias. She asked if I wanted to come with, but I told her that I had to go home. Then we went separate ways and I was about to start on my journey home, but then I heard my name.
"Andrea." It was Antonio and I turned quickly, too quickly, I wasn't sure.
"What is it?," I asked.
"I wondered if you were free to come. I had plans to go to the nearest Mac Donald's to get something to eat and it nice to do that together with someone..."
In my mind I may have somehow registered that he in some way was asking me out, but then I just said "okay" and didn't think more of it and we walked out of the park together.
***
To walk next to him to a Mac Donald's didn't feel weird or special. In fact it felt completely natural and as if it was how it should be. Sitting across him at a square table with chips and a coke in front of me and burger and coke in front of him also seemed completely natural.
"You're a coke-person too, I see," Antonio said, stating a fact, not asking a question.
"Yes, always Coca Cola, you know!"
He smiled at my answer and then we ate in silence while sending glances across the table. He really looked very handsome. After five minutes or maybe more, I didn't keep track of time, he talked once more.
"Is it some kind of deal you have, you and you're sister. You have to visit the park once a week or something?"
"Well, kind of," I started and then I told him everything, about how my mom had favoured me for being more realistic, about how it had drained our relationship, basically the whole story. He listened and seemed interested and I felt so glad to finally get things of my chest.
"I think it should be a mix," he said when I were finished. "I think that one should find a balance between daydreams and reality. It seems like people often chooses to be one of the two because they are afraid of going to far the other way, if you see what I mean?"
I understood exactly what he meant. In some way he had managed to explain the problem I'd had my whole life in just a few sentences. That was something I found amazing and I think my face told that cause he smiled knowingly. We talked away the evening and the clock must have been about 21:00 or something when it finally occurred to us that it was time to go home.
"I had a nice evening," Antonio said as we parted.
"Me too," I told him and as I walked home I thought to myself that it maybe was something to what Molly had said. Maybe, just maybe, I was in love...
***
Picture an artist drawing the rainbow as a bridge to eternity. Picture him drawing himself and you walking across it hand in hand and picture yourself waking up and knowing that it's Sunday and you'll surely walk through the park once more.
Short story by Karoline
Read 1119 times
Written on 2006-10-09 at 18:39
Tags Park Art Love
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