It is no secret that our memory enjoys playing with our visions of the past. A secret place in our intelligence seems to pick some of them apart from the others, amplify them and give them fantastical wings with which to haunt our imagination for ages after we lived through those experiences.
Magical memories like those return to us in our times of contemplation, and when they do, they often stun us, sometimes as far as immobilizing us, and we seldom suspect the reason why they affect us the way they do. But a part of us accurately points at them, almost as if they contained the most precious tellling of our life’s story, with the same haunting power of a sublime summer dream.
There are many such times when I remember the girl I met in Paris, many years ago. Even though our meeting was brief, I would never feel as connected to anyone as I did to her when I looked at her. I never spoke a word to her, and I doubt she ever really took notice of me as I drove past her in a streetcar, small as the tiniest insect at her feet. I eagerly turned my head upwards to the heavens, trying with all my might to have a look at her beautiful face. She was leaning on the Iron Tower, whose raw monumental magnificence dwarfed pitifully in comparison to the awesome titaness. She had a lost gaze in her hazelnut eyes, and her luscious brown hair waved gently in the wind, like the gleaming, ondulating grass in the countryside. Her gaze was fixed in a wistful gesture somewhere on the horizon, her lips partially turned open, blowing a calm breeze into the misty autumn sky.
I lost sight of her as crossed the river into the city. I remember remaining shocked for a few minutes in my seat, in fact I may have missed my stop before finally coming to my senses and sluggishly dropping out of the streetcar, several streets away from where I was supposed to be going. I was astonished to see the city folk undisturbed and going on their regular business, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all. By contrast, I remained stunned all day by the sight of the Giantess, and even though I did manage to get to work on my chores of the day eventually, her figure returned to me in my thoughts several times during the day.
There was very little hope in shaking her off, but unlike the dirty kind of obsessions which haunt us in our darkest days, the returning memory of the Giantess always gave me the gentlest, sweetest feeling of melancholy. In very little time I learned to welcome her in my daydreams, of which she soon became the absolute mistress. And though I would never see her again, I cannot help but smile and think of her every time I see the Iron Tower proudly piercing the clouds as I walk through the bridges over the River Seine.
Such is my memory of the dream girl in the Field of Mars.
