Head Over Flats - Saarik

I fell in love with Saarik on a Tuesday. I wasn’t alone in this. If there was anyone within earshot of him who was not-even momentarily-smitten, they have no soul.

We were in the midst of the sultry part of summer where even the shade doesn’t offer much relief. Still, that is where I was, hoping to avoid the evil death-glare of my arch nemesis the sun. Saarik was oblivious as he unpacked a guitar case from the back of his battered old suburban. I had been riding around with him in that junker for the better part of a week, and had never noticed an instrument case in the back among his tools, coolers and camping supplies.

He spoke to the blonde Gibson guitar as he lifted her out of her case. I could tell it was a “her” from his tone, which was somewhere in the rumbly region just below a murmur. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, and I suddenly felt like I was intruding or spying, unable to move or speak in my little slice of shade by the cluster of tents. He spoke to her like a lover, and his hands caressed her curves in a way that would have made me blush if that wasn’t already a near-permanent fixture of my cheeks.

It didn’t take Saarik long to tune her. He didn’t look up or around, but there was something self-conscious in the way he started to play. The notes were timid and he didn’t sing. He was finger-picking gently, almost aimlessly.

When he closed his eyes and started to sing, I ceased to exist. Like the world to an infant with no concept of object permanence, I slipped away. I had to, there was something so raw and so beautiful in his voice that told me to.

I sensed movement without really seeing it. Our friend Alice had approached and stood unmoving by the firepit with a load of wood in her arms. She was smiling and eyeing Saarik with a fascination that was probably mirrored on my face. She could see it, hear it, feel it too.

Every girl will tell you that a man who plays a musical instrument is sexy. A man who plays and sings, coaxing the melody of your soul out of metal strings on a frail wooden frame and sets it loose into a clear summer day, his earthen eyes closed and fringed by long dark lashes, well that is something beyond sexy. That man is magical and vulnerable and intensely love-able.

"Music acts like a magic key, to which the most tightly closed heart opens." (Maria Augusta von Trapp)