Our Journey By The Sea

by

John Presco

Copyright 2023

I put my pea coat down on the sand, and held Melinda by the sea, looking up at the stars!

“I can’t go home. My father will beat me. I have friends in San Francisco. I can go there. I can walk along the coast.”

“You can’t walk. It’s a long way. If you insist, I will walk with you!”

I posted this song by Boris, and tried to find the lyrics because it amplifies the powerful and dramatic love Melinda and I had for each other. After being grounded, after being caught being the lover of a twenty-four year old Venice Beat, this sixteen year old student of University High School – is grounded. No longer a virgin, my love wants to live the life of a grown woman. When she was six months old she was written up in Time magazine for speaking sentences! When we first lay eyes on each other – we radiated intelligence. Our – eye was opened! A purple wave of light – was exchanged! We just wanted to press our foreheads together……and go amongst the stars.

Bryan told me my love’s father murdered his good friend. Melinda executed a plan. She told her parents she would be walking to school with her friend Christine, who they met. It took twenty minutes walk to school. Christine and her friend, Raphael, walked with. What morning bliss. We radiated the Lover’s Radiance. We were – a religion! The want for each other – was an orchestra playing!

I read the lyrics again as I listened. I was amazed because this is a story about man, who like a knight, comes for the one he must have – or die! This is Fair Rosamond, in her bower. Who guards her…..

Her dark father!

So, he will come in the darkest of nights, and commit the darkest of deeds! He will steal a young woman – from her father! And for this deed….he must die!

Tis I who am the virgin. And she wants to know, are all her affairs going to be fatal, and for her, love is in vain?

Such was the consideration of children, driving the engine of life, for the first time….

amongst the stars!

Children, in the garden wanting to corrupt each other……with love!

We were so utterly alone!

No one else – existed! Melinda began to cry.

I wrapped my coat around her and brought her close. I heard my voice assure her, with wisdom I did not know I owned. I wrapped my coat around her, and gave her kisses. Our long walk in life….

had begun.

My darling

I know where lives my darling:

Her home is safe and high.

Inside her topmost chamber

Nobody’s able to pry.

A watchman guards my beauty,

All locks and walls are strong.

Nobody will restrain me,

They can’t stop me for long!

I’ll break through to my sweetheart

And fall at darling’s feet…

I only need the darkness,

Black darkness to succeed.

I only need the darkness,

Black darkness to succeed,

I only need to harness

The fastest troika steeds!

I only need to harness

The fastest troika steeds!

Troika with wolves, an example of Palekh miniature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troika_(driving)

The troika has become a cultural icon of Russia, especially after it was featured in a scene of Nikolay Gogol‘s novel Dead Souls,[3] where a character marvels at a troika speeding through the vast expanses of Russia (Oh troika, winged troika, tell me who invented you?). The person carried by Gogol’s troika – Chichikov, the protagonist of the novel – is a fraudster buying “dead souls” (ownership of dead serfs whose deaths had not yet been registered by population censuses) with the intent of taking out a loan against them. The irony of the iconic Russian troika being the bearer of a swindler has been discussed in Vasily Shukshin‘s short story Started Skidding (“Забуксовал”).[4]

The 1934 Russian film Lieutenant Kijé portrays a wild ride on a troika, accompanied by music by Sergei Prokofiev. Prokofiev later expanded his score into the Lieutenant Kijé orchestral suite; the “Troika” movement in particular has been reused in many popular works.[5]