I took my coffee on the roof this morning, listening to the wind and my favorite music piped in through wires and tubes. Took off my clothes with a silent chant of "Down with tan lines! Up with nude beaches!" and had a moment of clarity and melancholy as I communed with history and extracted myself from it. The things I believe in have no place in history; nobody writes a historical narrative about freedom, beauty, truth, and love. Hammocks, and gardens overflowing with watermelons and zucchini, and sunny afternoons spent on blankets in knee-high grass--don't make history books. So I'm a bohemian alone on the roof, refusing to be a part of a history that isn't about people and life but some lofty importance we all assume we have. I believe in the beauty of insignificance. I would rewrite history a different way, fill the annals of time with the sun-carved lines on Columbus's face, the flutter of Marie Antoinette's heart before the guillotine, the sigh of relief from the back of Hemingway's throat as the first swallow of whiskey hit his belly in the morning.
I waved to the man who sits on the neighboring roof sometimes; I could see his smile from fifty meters away right before I ducked inside.
I have a confession to make: it doesn't make sense to me to be studying a history I don't believe in; I'm made for trees and old time string bands and smores and thunderstorms. I'm not an academic, and sometimes I think I hate History. I just want a dacha in the woods and a typewriter and a kitchen and a garden and some baby goats that will grow up to be mama goats. My tastes are simple.
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