Short Stories

Synthesizers

  It was that kind of temperature that you usually get at the beginning of spring, or late winter, or maybe at the cusp of winter. That weather when it feels like a gust of wind paused mid flow, like there's still tension and cold around you but no movement, except for other little gusts of wind that are moving within the larger, frozen one. It's not so cold that you have to wear a thick jacket but you would wear a warm sweater with something to stop the wind on top of it, but you'd have your zippers open. The kind of weather wear you could go outside with a hat but a few minutes later would regret it.

 There's something serenely melancholic about that weather to me; maybe it's the fact that all of the animals are still gone hibernating or down south, maybe it's the snow that will occasionally fall down onto my boots. It reminds me of what's inside my head, how everything is cold but still warm enough to survive in.

 I like going out when it's dark out in that weather. No one else is outside, just me, the street lamps, the existent yet non existent wind and, of course, a cigarette. My dry hands shake because I forget to put gloves on, every time. My breath appears before me, blending in with the smoke that leaked out of my cigarette.

 And there's a feeling that I get then that I'm not sure I can describe. It's like not seeing colour but knowing that you live in it, like feeling music but not listening to it, like, well, I told you, I can't describe it.

 It's like sex and synthesizers. Like feeling grounded to reality but like you're elsewhere at the same time. Like euphoria but diluted and in black in white. Like something that's just good enough but also more than what was asked for.

 Perhaps sex and synthesizers, cold weather and cigarette, perhaps anything that provides us with that semi-euphoria, is just a veil that we place carefully around our lives to forget that all we have is things to forget. Because life is nothing but a series of memories that we look back on if we have the time to do so. And why not look at those memories with rose coloured glasses of wind that's not blowing synths so heavy you could die under the weight of them?

 It was a summer some years ago, maybe ten, maybe twenty. It was warm and I'd just gotten a new car. I was driving on the highway in between two fairly small cities, so it was pretty empty on the road. The radio was on pretty loud, but not loud enough to wake up the girl who was asleep in the back seat. I kept flipping through radio stations until one caught my attention. You guessed it- it was synth heavy music. It entranced me.

I pulled up to a gas station soon later and filled up, the radio still on. When I got back into the car she was awake. I started driving again, onto a new highway, and we sat in silence. I heard her mumble something about the music but dismissed it. We were both tired.

 I puff on my cigarette, it's getting a little too short.

 I don't want to go back inside and loose this veil.

 I have made myself a moment, but moments are not made to hold onto. They are made to look back on.

 And  I cannot hold onto wind or sound or sex, either.

 I can hold onto my cigarette, and I suppose that that's enough.