It’s in the amber glow of this well-preserved historic art deco elevator that one is full frontally accosted by Iulia’s hyperbole-proof allure. The fine serein of her voice as she wordlessly coos over the craftsmanship of the lift. It’s certainly all-around uplifting, the experience. She, herself, a veritable hoist upwards to rarified air.
Iulia hails from the merry meadows* of Moldova but puts her engineering know-how to exceptional good use in Antwerp charting out maps for the fire department. She combusts hearts and she helps extinguish them. It’s quite a racket.
Aside from a first rate mind for cartographical logistics she also commands a frightful and insightful cranium for art history. Where does she find the brain real estate for it all? My wheezing noggin is promptly stultified by the presence of this erudite hoyden so I defer to my interview questions early on during the encounter.
We find ourselves at LACMA now. And I ask this first corker in front of an auspiciously placed Magritte.
“What did you have for breakfast?”
“Eggs Benedict.”
Brain food, surely. But, frankly, with that dizzying purview of hers I would’ve classified Frito pie as brain food if that had been the answer.
I made with the golden oldie trio: What do you love, what do you fear, and what’s in your pockets?
“I love oceans and open water.”
Nautical. It doesn’t take too much mental strain to imagine her on a rock by the sea sporting a clam shell bikini and strumming some kind of lobster/barnacle instrument and wearing, I don’t know, a camisole of sea foam or something. Again, my imagination has been crippled due to sound brain stultification.
“Loneliness is a fear.”
I commiserated wholeheartedly. And with that we became two ships passing in the night. Bellowing our horns to the starless and bible black night. An ephemeral understanding and lament as our bows pointed inexorably in different directions. I wanted to leap over the guardrail and sloppily wade after her. But her stern lights were now just residual purple flashing spots under my eye lids as I gasped and struggled to stay afloat in the icy abyss.
“I’m wearing a dress. No pockets.”
Still drowning.
“If you could share a meal with any historical figure, living or dead, who’d you like to dine with?”
“David Bowie.”
“What’s you - - “
“1973 David Bowie.”
That’s a very specific David Bowie. Of all the permutations of the flamboyant bastard, I’d agree, he might make for the most interesting conversation. Being at the height of his popularity and all. At the very least, he’s likely to get the check.
This next series of questions took place in the extraterrestrial lightscapes of the Turrell exhibit. The shifting shades of hue does wonders to the fine contours of her figure. Like a Wong Kar-Wai picture. We’re all in the mood for love, it seems, when the light hits her so.
“What’s your favourite word?”
“Porebrik. It’s Russian.”
I pressed for the definition but the most I could extrapolate from the explanation is that it’s slang for curb or something. Couldn’t really say for certain. I was too distracted with rolling the word around on my tongue. It was a damn appealing word to utter.
Although, throughout the course of a scant few hours, I was able to investigate and arrive at some very concrete facts about this munificent Moldovan. Brush stokes of information that make for a very canny composite. And here they are in no definable pattern. Splashed across the canvass. Ceci n’est pas une Iulia:
She’s a dead vocal ringer for Marion Cotillard. She’s quite fetching with a LACMA sticker adorned to her forehead. Forgetful with passports. She was on a holy crusade to locate a Hollywood clapboard. And stamps. She was afflicted with a condition that caused her to drop a James Turrell pamphlet on the ground on the hour every hour. Does not brook guacamole. Multiple art pieces elicited a response from her in the tone of, “I wonder what it’d be like to sit on that?” Iulia’s fingers are the nimblest on earth as I witnessed her braid giant strands of spaghetti into a very natty Rapunzel coif. And she could probably make perfect sense of this hair-based equation:
She also is a keen flouter of expectations. Upon asking her if she’d be so kind as to produce a self-portrait for me she, with sparkle in eye, grabbed a nearby burrito menu and proceeded to fold a paper aeroplane. With precision JPL fingers did she manufacture a bonafide miniature paper Spruce Goose. This wasn’t an impromptu display of finger deftness. This was a sui generis performance of engineering perfection. I could smell the jet fuel.
The self-portrait wasn’t complete without a test flight. Alas, the maiden soar was not without its hiccups.
But the second flight was a marked improvement in trajectory.
And in the cargo hold of that little aeronautic marvel? My untellable affections for crafty and cunning lasses. Surveying the outer blue-black of space. Ship horns lulling in the distance.
*veracity of topography questionable.