So I'm sitting on my porch soaking up the lazy, hazy summer sun, inhaling my neighbors pot smoke, and listening to a ballgame on the radio. I haphazardly began thinking about a girl I once dated who fancied herself a fashion designer and made the type of clothes I could only describe as Surrealist or Dadaist influenced. No one in their right mind would wear these duds in public unless they wanted to turn heads, garner a few chuckles, or confuse a few bumpkins. This girl had short blonde hair and sort of looked like the incarnation of actor Jean Seberg; most notably from Jean-Luc Godard's classic, Breathless. She was clearly a fashion maverick, and her style was unique, colorful, and daring, albeit she will always be remembered for her powers of temporary insanity which seems to be the method of any artist.
I thought back on the time this femme du jour and I were in New York and we made a special trip to the Bronx so I could see the old Yankee Stadium. I took her by the hand and led her through the labyrinthine tunnels of the subway until we exited the dank station, emerging into the light onto a dirty, antiquated gum-strewn street in front of the transcendent "House that Ruth Built." This moment gave me a rare child- like sense of wonder, and then it occurred to me, planted there in reverence, that Mark McGwire had hit a game-tying homer in this joint off Mariano Rivera just the year before on Opening Day. I remember feeling a sense of vindictive satisfaction (albeit small) watching it on television as Big Mac rounded the bases with a curly, strawberry blonde mullet bouncing off his obscenely rounded and highly illegal shoulders. These were my pinnacle Yankee-hating years.
I snap out of the smoke and fog as the crowd buzzes on my speaker-a double in the left-field corner. June is crawling into July and I imagine that a few ragtag drunks in the bleachers are shirtless. It's too hot to be sitting on the porch. There is sweat dripping down my back and the unearthed memory, one of the millions of retained memories, skitters back to its desolate corner. This echo from the past will be safely locked away and forgotten until the key returns to my hand at the most random, inopportune moment in the future; no doubt with small details changed and with emotions dulled. I look around and appreciate the warmth of the sun on my skin, and I am filled with gratitude because I am alive in a world that is immeasurably rich and complex-but only if you're willing to struggle and wrestle with the suffering as much as with the pleasure.