Beautiful Stranger

Daylight was pouring over my shoulder as I walked past the gothic pillars of the stone-gray library. Caught up with ambulatory paranoia, I focused and let my feet move as directed by a notion to pursuit forward movement. I tried to open my mind as I walked past the seemingly trafficked sidewalk. I wanted to get away from everybody like a phantom moving between people, along people, and through people. But despite my preoccupation on my sweet escape, my vision was ensnared by a shrill, vivid light dilating my pupils into a sudden flabbergast, like a euphoric inoculation of belladonna. I then found myself looking at sunshine - the kind I long ached for.

He was framed by the pilasters of the intoxicating hallway near the auditorium when I first saw him. He was walking wearing a pair of tattered, paint splattered khakis and worn out rubber sandals, with just the right laid-back, hippy attitude - exactly as I imagined him to be. I stopped moving. I never knew that phantasms could create such energy that brings itself into being. I was truly preoccupied or rather disturbed on what seemed to be a hallucinatory apparition that I missed to realize that I was not looking at my way. It was the echoes of my own phantom that alarmed me that he wasn't illusionary, but rather, a real, breathing flesh, which I had just bumped into. At first sight, he was not such a prophet, just about disappointing with his all skin and bones physique clothe with a sheer linen shirt. I took time to see right through his body until our eyes met. There is an intense power in the way he stares, something captivating, and quite hypnotic.

"Oh, darn! I'm really sorry," I heard him say.

I tried to think, but the effort was useless.

"Beautiful stranger," I blurted out in a murmur.

"Huh? Pardon?" he asked estranged.

I pulled up myself into full height to ease my stiffened bulk. I was stuck in a moment of lunacy, and desperation.

"A songline. LSS. I'm sorry." I responded with a weak a smirk.

Our eyes met again, and the ennui in his eyes was replaced with inquisitiveness, and query. I cleared my throat and excused myself. He plundered my emotions while I was looking at his sunshine. And that made it obvious that his existence agitated my being. I drew back and started to move on. In me was sudden urge to run, to hide, or to just go on unnoticed.

His form blurred from the shadows of the halls, like a mere ethereal delusion unclear yet has inevitably existed. He probably won't remember me. I strode swiftly along the covered walk between the college buildings, took a quick turn, and finally made it out to the main gate.

Around me, distortions seemed inescapable. Buildings filled with people, friends, and lovers spun around my wicked thoughts. Vehicles passed like fading spots of rainbow blotting before my eyes. The trees are melting with the illumination of daylight. Visions of songlines stretched across time and space before me, like nerves throbbing into reality. Outback aboriginals believed that wherever a person has trodden they always leave a trail of song. Everyone you meet in that trail sings the same song you sing. It connects you to people, time, and place. I blinked my eyes and continued to trudge my songline.

"Preposterous," I heard myself whisper.

I was served with a cup of freshly brewed Arabica, took in its erotic aroma with delight and breathe out with a sigh. My sensorium was fully aroused as I sipped in the black concoction. I leaned at the sofa as I sat embracing my knee in a fetal position. The warmth of the cushion surrounded me with a familiar comfort that this nook never failed to give me.

I took the linen covered hardbound copy of the book I just borrowed from the library. Four figures of Greek muses in sheer trappings commenced as I opened the book. It reminded me of sunshine, and how it diffused his soft sheer linen shirt. I felt myself smile, until a feeling of ferment froze my body in parasthesia. The first time we met, he had already proven himself more than my hegemony - a feminine weakness.

"Beautiful stranger, wasn't it? I knew that songline." He figured.

He sat across my seat with a spellbinding aura, smiling. I tried to hide mine, but his mere existence made me feel elated.