Once upon a time, a young lady took a trip to a far away land. She didn't speak the language, though her three traveling companions were well versed. After a late night trip into a city that seemed always illuminated they spent the better part of three hours trying to find a place to stay. The original hostel was far too seedy, the second hostel was far too expensive but the third hostel, ah the third one, was just right. After a well deserved nights rest the girls woke to a clear morning and began their exploration of the unknown territory.
They happened upon ancient statues that towered over the telephone poles and street lamps of the more modern persuasion.
The young lady found glimpses of her own past cast in iron on buildings with more memories than she could ever know.
She found a familiar modernity that could exist only in her place and time, a gift and a curse of globalization.
She found her own element in the antique street markets set up by locals selling memories that never belonged to them.
At noon they sat for a simple meal to refuel and continue the day. But what they found next they weren't expecting...
Monsters, angels, and other such creatures lined the path as wide and rippled as a river. Some waited with impatient hands and greedy grins, ready to reel in the victim hooked by their gaze.
Others opened their hands for others to take and offered a sense of peace and tranquility amongst the greedily grinning gargoyles.
Others stood immobile, proud to be counted as one of the many ancient statues the city possessed.
The comrades walked to the historical sites located on the map if the city...
And they interrupted one couple's own history beginning.
They found pharmacies made by Charlie long after Mr. Wonka had left the chocolate factory. Walls lined with lemon drop laxatives, fireball fat burners, and assortments of jelly bean cure-alls.
Next they came to the home of music in this unknown city. Forbidden to take pictures inside lest they make a terrible mess of things with their foreign ways they were forced to stand outside the giant glass walls and gaze in at the glory of the ceilings that seemed to fall up into the heavens, adorned with ruby reds and gold.
While there a young boy, unbeknownst to his parents, climbed up in front of a statue which, unbeknownst to him, used to be a real man. And there they stood, together, never having known one another but meeting just the same in this city where the past seems to constantly be reaching inward from the corners of the city limits.
Many things happened on the walk home that day. They passed a crowd staring up, admiring a young woman in a white dress waving and blowing kisses from a balcony.
They passed one of the many gothic churches. Simple in color though breathtakingly ornate.
They wandered past gelato shops with the most curious of flavors.
As they approached the hotel they practically tumbled into a street market, not entirely unlike Alice down the rabbit hole. As they went delicacies from this unknown land lined the walls, though the walls seemed to be fixed only to the floor and the ceiling was suspended by something entirely unseen.
In her current life path the young woman was working on making her living as a baker. Thus when she passed a vitrine filled with sweet breads and chocolates she had to gaze.
When night came the young ladies descended upon the town like wolves made of smoke. Wafting in their pack from one edge of town to the next. Hungry for more fantastic sensations, the first of which was an optical feast of colors and lights thanks to Mr. Gaudi.
Then the fountains at the opera spilled forth with streams of starlight.
Next the young ladies treated themselves to dinner, eating slowly to savor every morsel before heading to bed.
Time slipped away and it was difficult to tell if they had been there two days or two week or longer still. They were entranced, enchanted, entrapped by the city. Compelled to walk along the streets and lose themselves in hidden rooms of stores.
The windows of the stores called the girls, beckoning them to come in "just a bite" some would say "you can just look" whispered others.
The girls, lured by the calls, gave in. They ate the food, drank the wine and became trapped in a stupor that was though to exist only in the legend of the lotus eaters.
Night fell quite literally, as if it had caught it's foot going upstairs and landed on its face over the city.
In the night, it seemed that color and water flowed forth from the same source. As if it was always there but hidden in the blinding light of day.
The foods they ate an the sights they saw in those last moments during their stay were like something from stories or from history, or perhaps both. Huge legs of beef, smoked, seasoned, dried, hung in store windows.
Golden crispy dough coated in sugar an filled with dulce de leche.
The sun gleamed off the tips of the towers of a church still to be completed, it's original architect long since dead, never to see the finished result.
At the end the young girl went to the rooftops with her companions an looked down over the city. The time had passed in a daze, in a work of fiction. She scanned the lights out into the city limits, out past the golden an starry glow of fiction and into the hills and mountains, unable to see the natural light of the stars even though it was a perfectly clear night. And though it had been a fabulous trip I realized it was time to return. Back into being, back into living, back to France; for "the mountains are calling, and I must go".
The End (for now)
