Of Inner Beauty and Guacamole

I look out my windows and in the distance I see verdant mountains swimming in the central range of the Colombian Andes and think: “that is beauty”, but then, looking closer, I see the city, I see slums and squalor and think of the people who live there, the humble and the predators, then I glance at the more affluent areas and think, that’s where those who prey on the predators live.

I dream of beaches on the shores of snowcapped mountains, lapped by warm water, Mediterranean or Caribbean, it doesn’t matter, it could as easily be South Pacific, but still unsullied and, if not still virginal, at least not yet courtesan. Then I think of my apartment, how beautiful the woodwork and the views were when I first saw it, and how, slowly, I incorporated myself into every nook and cranny, and how it seems even more beautiful to me now, and I wonder how I might transpose it to the mountain nestled seashores in my dreams.

I wonder then if my apartment too can be considered an aspect of inner beauty, reflecting on the nature that lies far outside the city and in the beaches kissed by warm waves to the delight of a very few appreciative spectators sharing drinks and ideas and ideals and hopes, some of which may someday be reflected in the patterns of stray syllables dancing on cream colored pages smudged in exotic inks with traces of guacamole not quite cleanly wiped from where it falls during careless autumn nights, in climes without seasons.

Then, pondering on the nature and variety of colors, first as an abstract and then, coalescing into flowers and mountains and seas and pretty girls’ eyes, I gradually drift into the land of half formed dreams, the kind that precede sleep and then flee leaving profoundly meaningful but short-lived after images, then realize that they’re already lost, returned to some other memory from which they’d momentarily strayed. And I wonder whether in that lost instant I’d found the meaning I’d been seeking, truth teasing and then gone.

Memories of other places I’ve loved in other times stir and I realize I love them still, then wonder if all those memories are real.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2015; all rights reserved