November 03, 2002
fleeting moments of perfection
Yesterday morning two friends of mine drove two hours to spend the day with me.
We went to the Tucson Celtic Festival and Scottish Highland Games where we spent hours just walking around laughing and looking at jewelry, weapons and scally caps. Drinking beer and hearing lectures on the real meaning of septs, the correct way to wear a kilt, and the history of certain clans. We listened to bagpipes and flutes and drums. We saw little girls dancing and muscular men competing with cabers and stones..
When it was over we drove around until we found what looked like a rundown Irish pub, but in fact turned out to be quite lovely. We sat in an outdoor patio with vines and shrubbery that climbed the walls and obscured the bottom half of a wooden statue of St. Joseph. We sat there for two hours with the calming sound of the fountain in the background just talking. About relationships and goals, hopes and desires, painful past experiences.
When we finished drinking we walked down Forth Avenue to The Casbah Tea House. Along the way we ran into groups of people in costume, singing, dancing and playing music.. it was wonderfully surreal and only got better when we arrived at the tea house and were about to order when someone ran in yelling that the Day of the Dead parade was passing by. Everyone raced outside to watch as four blocks worth of people in colorful costumes with interesting contraptions walked, danced and skipped past us with the sound of music in the backdrop. The waitress and I pushed to the front of the crowd and danced and got flowers thrown to us. I was terribly tempted to join in. To forget myself and dance away.
Instead the boys and I found a pair of couches towards the back of the tea house and relaxed with cups of hot ginger chai tea and tempah salad.
Eventually I dropped to boys off at their car, hugged them goodbye and drove home feeling exhausted and happy.
All in all it was perfect. Next year will be better though, because next year I'm donning a costume and dancing in that parade. Utter (albeit fleeting) perfection..
10:23 a.m.