Where do I begin? It has got to be that ride from across the bridge. But I guess it takes more than that. Way too more. A short trip does not mean you will find a Zoya in certain Zoe Gallagher Avery. I mean that sort of thing just does not happen.
I really found Zoya was when I first looked into her eyes. I just did not have a clue that a pair of eyes like that existed. I have looked into many eyes in my life. I have seen ocean blue. I have seen emerald green. Talking of green, I remember once seeing small leaf fig green. That is just blue and green I have talked of so far. There is more I have seen. So many more colors, so many pairs of eyes. I have also looked into eyes that were fading brown, glazed crystal gray, dark brown and the intense black. Some beautiful, some exotic and some extraordinary. But none of that could ever match what the eyes of Zoya had. That symphony of notes, that subdued glaze of mellow and that vibrance of life. I had never ever seen all of that in one place. Those eyes. Looking at everything, yet so distant. Drawing you in, yet so aloof. I knew it then. Zoya was way beyond what anyone would think of her as. Could imagine her to be.
Zoya evolved on me. On my thoughts, on my existence and on my senses. Like the onset of spring that begins with dry petals and grows into a fulfilled promise of color, essence, brightness and bloom. Without ever wanting to, without ever really trying to, I just felt the distances shrinking and our existences converging. She did not mind rooks being called elephants, bishops being called camels and knights being called horses. She could care less about the conventionality. She was all about everything that at times did not exist to the normal eyes. She was all about challenging senses and romancing life in her own way. and while she did all that she did not even know she did it all. Every passing moment of knowing Zoya I knew that she was a maverick defining her own world and her own existence. And defining a world and an existence for all that was around her. To know Zoya, you had to know that world. You had to know her existence. Else you would have seen all of Zoe yet never have known Zoya.
It took me some time. Not a lot. But a bit of time to really figure out when Zoe turned into Zoya for me. She had a way. A way with my senses. She could be just herself and still make me see colors of life. And not only me. She had her way with sandstones, with the wind and with trees on a windy sunday afternoon. I could feel her talking to them. And them talking back. They had her own language with her. Every swirl, every mild gust spoke to her. and she would smile at them. I would stand back and watch them talking. Hear the conversation but not understand it. Like when you are in the middle of Bordeaux listening to people talk and when you do not understand a word of French. But you still know they spoke. It was kind of like that. I knew Zoya spoke to them. The wind, the fig tree, the sandstone. For, as long as she was there, with them; they just spoke. I did not understand a word of what they talked about but I knew they talked. A lot.
I still don't know fully what Zoya is! But I know why Zoya is. Like I don't know what Rachmaninoff, Choppin and Rubinstein are but I know why they are. I know they are because the world needed them. The world has always needed them. Forever. Sometimes for reasons that can't be defined but always for reasons that speak to your soul. Such is Zoya for me. I am still getting to know who Zoe is but I know for sure why Zoya is. She is because she speaks to my soul. And sometimes she does all that without uttering a word. All I know is that Zoya is there and that I can see and feel her.
