February222009
2/22/09 - An All-Day Breakfast.
The only formal meal I had today was breakfast. It was all I needed.
By chance, Christine and I crossed paths again. Hungry for a more in-depth conversation this time around, we arranged to make breakfast together on a Sunday morning.
While she prepared the apple cinnamon pancake mix, I chopped up pieces of pear and bananas brought back from the Reading Terminal Market. As we fried and flipped our pancakes, the smell of espresso expanded our still awakening minds.
Though the day threatened to be busy for the both of us, we talked and enjoyed our food as if time was not a dimension here and now. It wasn’t until noon that I noticed the clock with sudden alarm, and rushed out the door for a meeting nearly missed.
I’d like to say I wish I had met this girl earlier.
But it really doesn’t matter. We may as well have known each other for a long time. From the moment I walked through her door, it was immediate intimacy; when two people completely open and transparent come together, it has to be just so. Conversation exploding in all directions like fireworks.
Towards the end of the meal, Christine was inspired by her previous night’s dinner to caramelized the bananas we had left. The outside, crisped with butter and sugar, encased a center liquefied. Melted the instant we bit through.
You know sometimes, when you listen to people you begin to hear something much more than what they are saying in words.
She was telling me about Maya Angelou’s recent speech on campus.
It’s an echo of feelings that you hear.
And it was an echo of feelings that I heard this morning when we talked. I snacked the rest of the day, because breakfast had kept me full in more ways than one.
Still, I craved for more of its extension.
By nightfall, when I left the darkroom where I had worked all evening, I came home to replicate our caramelized bananas. On top, I melted dark chocolate over and sprinkled some cayenne pepper - the things we spoke of, made richer upon a day’s reflection.
