Time is like a fashionable host that greets its guests with a variety of hues and styles depending on occasions: for weekdays, it welcomes the guests with professional attire and proprieties perfected in workmanship. But for its festive weekend guests – especially the divine sabbatical Sundays, the host and the guests are all dressed in delightfully comfy clothes to lounge around their homes free from dress codes. On this beautifully leisurely Sunday afternoon, Seraphina, a full time secretary who also sometimes moonlights as a ghost writer, decides to indulge herself in a banquet of music given by the fashionable host in celebration of the divine rest all to herself alone at home with her fluffy canine sister Nena.
Seraphina’s eclectic taste in music is worth the telling: a mixture of classical standard of beauty and her pleasant quirkiness and feminine queasiness stylishly fashioned with a modish streak is her trademark, which makes her belong in her own class by herself. During her totally off-guard hours, she goes for a parade of modern day troubadours of catchy melodies and good lyrics. “Good music is to refresh the mind of anyone after her studies or work, isn’t it?” is the question Seraphina asks to herself and Nena lying prostate at her feet in defense of music she listens to as she writes down a list of the five songs in mind as follows:
- Bigmouth Strikes Again – the Smiths (It’s rather surreal and dismal, but the mood created by the lyric is then betrayed by the upbeat, and melodious tune and mellifluously sonorous voice of Morrissey, who sided with Joan of Arc.
- Wouldn’t It be Good? – Nik Kershaw (The song emits pathos of human life tantamount to a brevity of Greek tragedy – or comedy? It’s about a person whose life seems to be in the rut of life. Seraphina remembers reading an article about the singer having worked at an employment agency, so maybe it might have resulted from his encounter with one of the unemployed about whom the singer felt a touch of humanity.
- Just Me and you – Jane Birkin (Seraphina’s fashion icon Jane Birkin sings a triumphant love in secret that gives no care to anybody but to her and her lover only.)
- Yesterday, Yes A Day – Jane Birkin ( J. Birkin is all femininity personified in a mixture of delightful sensuality and sultry sensuousness, which she wears like her favorite perfume. It’s never lewd or slutty, but stylishly and poetically intoxicating. Seraphina is emulous of her favorite icon’s style to all appearance.
- Daisy Bell – Blur (One day Seraphina accidentally found a retro but fabulous English sitcom “Mind Your Language” on her Kindle Fire for free thanks a lot to her Amazon Prime membership. In one of the episodes, amiable teacher Jeremy Brown, wonderfully played by the unforgettable Barry Evans, sang the song with his adult students at evening classes. Its tune so charming and catchy, Seraphina listens again to the song by the band whose CDs she had once collected.
Then she realizes that it is now almost late afternoon, the end of the restful day has come closer to the end of the meridian sun. And so has her afternoon respite from the existential dealings of the world. “Indeed pleasure and action make the hours short,” says Seraphina while glancing at her canine companion Nena taking an afternoon nap at her feet under the desk. “But with you my dear Nena and all the things I can think of to take care, I guess it’s not altogether bleak to live every day.” Seraphina smiles at Nena, gently caressing her fluffy body. It seems that to Seraphina and Nena at that blissful moment, God is in heaven, and all’s well with the world.
A Cat in the Mirror 