The Summer Journals - Part 7

The 10th Of January, 2006 – “The Ultimate”

All happened in a sudden: I was checking my emails and then I was SMS-ing this old friend of mine so we could meet.

I was so excited but I kept my cool, because I was meeting someone I didn’t see in two years. She used to be one of my dearest friends back at school times, especially because of our fights and disagreements, but 24 months are a lot and we surely changed and evolved during this peirod; I did, and she definitely would be “bigger”.

And she was. Mariana seemed way freer and way more liberated than the last time I had seen her. But the best part: she is still the same clever, quick, ironic, funny and talkative girl as always. So, since we met at Iguatemi mall (in a very spontaneous way: she was in this very fancy store and while I went down the escalator we glanced each other, and she did this absolutely Mariana-esque gesture: waved her arms high, opened her mouth widely as if she was screaming and gave little jumps; then I went there and we hugged fondly.), until the moment we parted, all we did was talking (we couldn’t stop ourselves – so many days passed, so many things to tell…).

Anyways, we walked along Oceânica avenue, in Barra, and later settled at this neat bar filled with foreigner tourists, Le Creppe. And we talked, and we drank, and talked, and had “lambreta” (some kind of seafood), and I drank, and then crabs, I drank more, then more talk (we never stopped actually, not even during crabs and lambretas), more drinks, more talk… and I was already very tipsy, and absolutely loving each moment.

Meeting Mariana was the ultimate part of the contact to the past. A past I was once stupidly afraid to meet again and in the end, turned out to be more delicious than ever. As myself, the past changed, evolved into present and walks right by my side. “Thank you terror, thank you disillusionment, thank you frailty, thank you consequence, thank you silence”: to know the ones I love are building up and changing with me is wonderful.

[Note: All this was written while rocked by genius Alanis Morissette, especially: Purgatorying, Thank You, Everything and Ironic.]