The One That Got Away

It's a saddest evening in the history of the universe.

Gazing out my window into the black empty sky, I can’t help but feel that, at this moment, I surely must be the loneliest man on the planet.

The future, and even life itself, now seems meaningless.

I'm missing someone. Pining for her. Tormented by her absence. Decimated by the hollowness within me.

Really, it’s much worse than feeling hollow; it’s more like being stranded on sand dune in a vast, desolate desert, and feeling miserable because of the hollowness inside you.... well, that, and the fact that you're way the fuck out in the middle of some stupid desert.

Then, at the moment you think you’re going to pass out from grief, a flock of large birds arrive. You think they’re going to lift you gently up into the sky and whisk you safely away like carrion luggage to your final destinations, but ... no.

Instead, they cut you open and start tearing at the inner lining of your torso’s shell with their bone-dented beaks, desperately ripping away any stray bits of gristle or "mystery meat" that still remain.

Satisfied that they've gotten anything worth getting, they then just stand in an informal circle and nonchalantly shoot the shit for a half an hour or so, before getting bored, tossing their toothpicks onto the sand, and flying away.

Things were bleak enough for you already, but then, by being forced to listen to brain-dead vultures talk trash about assholes you don't even know.....well... it has left you feeling more than slightly peeved.

Their behavior was just plain rude!

Unseemly.

Whatever happened to manners?

You try to heave, but all that comes out is a sigh.... a featherweight one, at that.

The sigh is followed by a floating bit of angel-soft vulture down that is carried away by the gentle desert breeze.

"Typical," you mutter to no one in particular.

Minutes pass in silence.

You feel absolutely gutted.

The situation is certainly less than ideal. Much less.

You're feeling even more hollow and even more alone than you were before.

There's only one thing left to say, but you're too weak to speak, so you think it, instead: "It looks like it's going to be one of those days."


How did this happen?


To say that she played an important role in my life would the biggest understatement of all time.

She opened my eyes to the beauty of all that is around us, and, in the process, completely transformed my world.

It was as if she had made me the beneficiary of the most spectacular Christmas present imaginable – life, itself.

She already had already received the present; and then she re-gifted it to me.

I loved, and still do love, her completely, devoutly, and unreservedly.

The fact that I don’t know where she went, or why she left, is something I refuse to spend time dwelling upon.

I just want her to come back. Right now. I can’t tolerate living my life without her.


Happier Times:

We met in Venice, just a few years ago.

I had been wandering around St. Mark's Square, trying naively to differentiate myself from looking like exactly what I was – just another American tourist.

It was while sitting at an outdoor café, sipping a cappuccino, and quickly skimming an Italian newspaper for the non-Italian words, that I spotted her.

She was alone in a crowd, strolling leisurely near the center of the enormous piazza.

Even from a great distance, it was apparent that she was like no woman I’d ever seen. Her beauty was so all encompassing; I found it physically impossible to avert my gaze.

As if in a trance, I paid my bill and began drifting in her direction. The closer I drew, the more intense seeming was the force that propelled me towards her. It was as if there were suddenly an undiscovered property of physics, called “irresistible allure,” that was as powerfully real as the one we know as “gravity.”

Any woman, who is blessed with awe-inspiring natural beauty, soon becomes accustomed to attracting the admiring gazes of men. In Italy, this is especially so.

Some of these women enjoy the attention, but most devise subtle ways of gracefully ignoring it.

I was standing no more than 10 feet away from her, staring like a love-struck rube.

She appeared to be lost in her own thoughts, and genuinely unaware of my presence.

Hunched down low to the pavement, she was, I realized, searching for something. What had she lost?

But, as she looked for whatever it was that she was seeking, she exuded an inner calmness and contentment.

Unlike the map-obsessed tourists all around her, she was savoring her journey, not mindlessly rushing towards her destination.

It was the moment I started to move closer, that she and I made our first eye contact. She looked at me as if our meeting were preordained by the heavens. Her eyes told the tale. She was mine. I was hers. For eternity.

On that day in Venice, and on each of the days, weeks, months and years that were to follow; Piccione took me under her wing.

The moment we met, magic came into my life.

I couldn't speak her language worth a damn, and she wasn’t much better at mine, but when you’re in love the formalities of speech are for the birds.

Between my odd assortment of clumsily pronounced words and labored phrases, and her endearing pigeon English, communication was never an issue.

When my Italian holiday was coming to a close, she agreed to return to New York with me.

Together, we relished the exquisite pleasures that life in any city has to offer. Activities that had seemed mundane when done on our own; became euphoric experiences when shared. The simple things became fun: sharing a newspaper, window-shopping, strolls, concerts and picnics in Central Park.

We didn't live together. Her Italian parents, and my landlord, wouldn’t have approved. She had her acting career. I had ornithological research position at the Museum of Natural History. We always ate lunch and dinner together. Whenever the weather was remotely pleasant, she preferred to dine al fresco in the park.

I always felt so proud when we were together. She once told me that I resembled an Australian actor who had been her favorite when she was a child. His Name was Rod Taylor. I was embarrassed to admit that I’d never heard of him.

(I never her told her this, but later I had looked up Rod Taylor up on Wikipedia. He wasn't Australian at all. He was a Welshman, from New South Wales. She must have confused him with the late Australian actor, Richard Burton. Italians!)

Piccione was an actress, on her way to becoming a star. She’d already appeared in several films; her biggest
role came in the Macaulay Culkin vehicle, "Home Alone 2" (which was much funnier than the
first Home Alone, but, then again, I'm biased), where she had some scene-stealing moments with Kevin and a homeless lady in the park.

Maybe she resented our move back to my hometown of Seattle? If so, she kept it to herself.

What went wrong?

This evening, I've been haunted by the lyrics to the song from Hall & Oates: "She's Gone."

Now, I'd pay the devil to get that fucking tune out of my head.

The last time I saw Piccione, I had been regaling her with a tale of the late Graham Greene's childhood: how everyone in his entire family: his brothers, his sisters and even his parents were spies.

I had prepared a lovely candle lit dinner for the two of us, and I was perhaps overly enthusiastic about everything.

“Can you imagine the impact that the spy business had on dinner conversations in the Greene household?” I guffawed, perhaps too jovially.

“And just think of the gifts they must have given one another! ‘Gee whiz, Dad, thanks for the unusually large pen!’ ‘Thank YOU, Graham, for this unusually large tie-clip.’"

Piccione listened, but I recall that she wasn't exactly cooing with amusement, as she normally did whenever I waxed poetic about the romance of espionage.

Normally that kind of anecdotal spy intrigue stuff fascinated her. Some of her ancestors had done intelligence work for a variety of governments during the past seven or eight wars. (I'd even seen a photo of her great grandfather with Mussolini.)

Thinking more about it, I recall that Piccione's head had been cocked to one side, as I chirped mindlessly on about the Greenes earlier that evening. Perhaps, I had unknowingly ruffled her feathers, so to speak.

Also, at dinner, I recall that she had barely touched her squab.

Still, this sudden lack of interest in war stories should have triggered air raid sirens in me, but it didn’t.

What a self-absorbed fool I was! *

And why did I insist on teasing by saying I was getting her "Grecian Formula" for her upcoming birthday?

She’s been gone for TWO HOURS now! And not a peep.

If anyone sees her, please let me know. If I don't get back to you, it's because I'm posting flyers on telephone poles all around Seattle.

Sad to say, I don't even know her last name.

For the record: she's probably 6 inche tall. Gray with black eyes, and a shimmering bluish-green in her breast and wing tops. She looks like many other pigeons, but there's a strange magic in her beady little eyes.



The life, Piccione. Without you... the life ..... she has no meaning.




* Thank goodness, I've changed.