If Wishes Were...

There are times when I see a photograph or two and they take me travelling, whisking me back in time, to some simple memory of happiness. Such a time I see now. I was sitting then in a small modernized living room of a middle seventeenth century rowhouse on the great Keizersgracht in Centrum, Amsterdam. Perhaps I romanticize it now, but I don't really think so, the memory is too delicious and clear. That first Christmas we were just barely settling into the apartment, the furniture had scarcely arrived from America, we'd purchased a few odd things in the Old City center and the room had an elegant sparseness which is not in my general design nature. The silk had been hung at the great windows facing the canal, and a few pieces of simple mahogany, a daybed and a table, a few Louis chairs, were floated on the grey plank floor. It was chilly, despite the new radiators heat and snow was falling steadily. The afternoon was late and already looked like evening outside, the light dim and blue. A perfect blue. I lit many candles and sat and watched the snow waft outside, the bare black trees, the dark canal and the row of houses opposite us slowly disappearing in the coming cloak of evening. The windows of our row house were very old, perhaps the originals. Coated heavily with chipped leaded cream paint they were huge blue eyes staring outwards. Some of the glass panes had been hand poured, distorting in a dreamy way the view, while others were modern and allowed a clear glimpse outside. I switched my gaze back and forth between the two types, enjoying for a moment the slight hypnotic distortion and then desiring the unobstructed clarity. Shifting between times. I pulled my sweater tight and curled up on the edge of the sleigh bed and dozed as the candles flickered. The cats moved in for warmth and we all three watched the snow, heard the wind echoing in the rafters, and took pleasure in the knowledge that we were bundled away from the storm and yet so close. A bit of glass away. I felt the occupants of another time sitting with me, watching the snow, their own candles burning. Harmony realized, a mystical deep peace which comes from being part of a continuum. As I dozed I came and went between centuries. I sit this morning in Los Angeles, as yet another perfect late summer day dawns, and I sorely miss the revery of that glorious winter evenfall - encapsulating a moment to which I wish I could return.