from blue to brown. and backwards

The beach is isolated; the party takes place among the palm trees. Everybody’s skin is covered with salt, everybody’s hair is messed. We are jumping up and down, we are out of control, in fact we are twenty centimetres above the sand, we can even walk on the water if we want it. Everything is possible, because everything is happening at this very moment. Some of us are falling in love, some friends are hugging each other, some others are kissing each other and disappear under the water, the DJ is literally our best friend, since the party is ours. This is our beach, our group of friends, our reunion. We carried everything ourselves, we all traveled sixty miles in order to be together. The idea came up during a penthouse party. We had already had some drinks and the party had warmed up, but we were talking a lot – daily routine, work, kids – and we were expressing so much dissatisfaction that we decided to just pump up the volume; to speak in each other’s ear; or just to dance until the morning comes, until we huddle on the beds. Or, instead of taking any sleep, to lie on the floor drunk and happy, to laugh at each other – because we already knew everybody’s vices, even our own. It was the time of introversion and it was about time to put an end to it. Once, we were overly extrovert. Every Friday evening we used to pack a bag and set off for somebody’s place. We spent the weekend all together, talking about love, about silly things, about what we wanted to become, about the Universe. The intensive contact was followed by a long silence. The end of a group of friends comes when they get married and decide that their family is no longer their friends but their “sweet home” (where the door is not always open to people who want to enter their life), so they move on and break it up. In our own episode of the new cycle, several years later, we decide that our new life does not differ from the previous one. We go back, but this is just to leave once more, all together. It sounds like a summer love and it might be one, but it is sweet as nightfall, as a postcard discovered in the bottom of the drawer.

maria

Extract from my “creative writing” seminars.