Yet perhaps this year's Christmas was actually able to do much for me. It was this year that I started believing that special things do happen on Christmas (anyday ,actually. I am just trying to stick to my storybook obsession) maybe if you have been miserable (or good!) all year long.
Luck appeared in the form of a potential trip one night. I was not really excited as I was faced with the prospect of spending it with virtual strangers. But hey...when am I ever the happy optimistic beam of sunshine?
Started out at dawn on what was to be one of the longest journeys of my life. A few hours into it though, I was actually laughing more than I had anticipated yet did not want to believe enjoyment was so close at hand. But the company was too hilarious (in a good way) for my shell to seem a very tempting attire. Beautiful roads, promising company and one maggie-point later I was making my way upwards to a foster pine storybook chapter again.
It was all that an ever cranky me could wish for. Cobble lanes coloured red and yellow with shed leaves, small wooden houses with flowering gardens that looked like they were painted on greeting cards and people sipping steaming beverages in a calm sunshine...these were just the beginnings. Smiling fortune took me to stay at a place where wooden cabins with fireplaces (though some did not work) awaited me. Beds with two quilts which still did not manage very quickly to keep the chill out. Wooden swings meant for drinking tea on while watching pink horizons after sunset and old English lamps lighting the driveway. Yes it was like the old Christmas stories.Fluctuating voltages and hot water timings were just part of the charm.
Then what? Days were spent walking on trails, trying to trek while falling on fellow brave hearts (read:blunt heads). Evenings were spent working up appetites sitting on those darn slippery slopes and then satisfying them by eating like starved maniacs. But ah! the nights...playing badminton (in my case, watching others play) and then sitting, gossiping,laughing around bonfires,with music to complete the picture. How can you describe it? Charming...that is the only word.
No it will never match up to what could have been and what I still yearn for (Shillong!duh!). Call it a small summer or rather winter affair. The kind where the heart prods the butterflies out of their hibernation,just for a while. The kind where strange unknown feelings are simply communicated by sight and smiles. There are blushes and inexplicable sighs. But that is just it. It lies somewhere between "nothing" and "something"...the "perhaps something" maybe?
All said and done the storybook was there to save Christmas. Yes I know it will not always be there. But maybe it will? Its nice to believe in Santa. He is a pretty happy guy and that is something to admire, especially for people like me. Why? because I am back but I am still smiling about it...like you always do when you remember such strange "affairs".
It was all old storybook and given the timing, maybe even poetry. And this time is unforgettable, perhaps this will explain why...
"And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me...."
-Pablo Neruda (from Poetry).
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me...."
