Anthem by Filo and Peri (awesome summer track 1)

Mid-Summer Night's Ghost

Since my arrival in Cairo only 3 weeks ago, and with three weeks left of this trip, a familiar sense of exhaustion and nostalgia settles in. Exhaustion at the routine, the people that have managed to stay almost exactly the same since high school- frequenting the same bars and eating at the same restaurants. Nostalgia at the beautiful summers that I have had here, with carefree days where the realm of possibility and spontaneity extended even beyond the breadth of the persistently blue sky. Every year I try and recreate the atmosphere, to 'let loose' and get a taste of anything that I had missed to the 'n'th degree. And usually I succeed.

The same song goes through my head:
"I can see you,
your brown skin shining in the sun...
You've got your head thrown back and your
sunglasses on..."

I spend hours on the beach, sometimes dancing in the water. I lose all sense of time and its relevance. I turn on my iPod and drive into sunsets almost on a daily basis- be it a cityscape or otherwise that lines the horizon.

But I'm also overwhelmed by a feeling that my intellect refuses to acknowledge. I miss you. I still remember every detail of that summer we had together. I remember you, my first love, my summer love. I remember the torment that lasted a year before luck struck and you returned to me. I remember the passion and lust that engulfed us and made both 'time' and 'place' intangible, alien concepts. Most of all I remember your hands, how they felt and how they fit in mine.

It's natural to deny this, after all I had rejected it all after one stressful weekend. Youth can be a terrible, improvident agent. Still I remain unsure if a mistake had been made. There is no doubt that I yearn for that physical intimacy, but on an emotional inter-personal level was there a match? There may have been. There must have been, but my ineptitude in self-expression has placed resentment amidst the whole scenario. I easily become a victim of my own failures, but I shudder at the memory of how much pain I caused you.