Old Songs in a New Cafe by Robert James Waller

Jamaica, in the
     spring.
    One of the most haunting entries in my journals reads, “12:24 P.M . Back in Iowa Georgia and Rachael are sleeping (3:24 A.M .), and Fm over Egypt.” When I wrote that, I remember feeling very far away, in more ways than just miles, somehow.
    My secretary leaves me alone when I fall behind in an especially unappealing piece of work, and a cold, gray, November rain
     is splattering against the third-floor windows of Seerley Hall. She knows I’m traveling. I stand, put my hands in my pockets,
     stare out those windows, and I’m comforted by the knowledge that somewhere the big planes are turning for Bombay or Bangkok,
     for Brisbane or Barcelona, and romance is skipping along their wings.
    But romance is not just outward bound. She also rides your shoulder when you turn for home, with your notebooks full, your
     suitcase packed with dirty clothes, when it’s only a few days before Christmas and London’s Heathrow Airport is pandemonium,
     with all flights overbooked. But then you’re on, in your seat, London falls behind, Ireland is below; you get out the notebook
     again, and you write,’God, all I want now is to see Georgia, Rachael, the pups, Roadcat, and eat a giant plate of Georgia’s
     world-famous spaghetti.”
    Finally, you’ve got to work at remembering that romance is all around you. It’s not somewhere else. Here are two examples.
    I had to go to the Hawaiian island of Oahu a while back. Everyone told me, before I went, how crass and junky Oahu and, particularly,
     Honolulu have become. It certainly looks that way, at first glance. “But,” I said to myself, “romance must still be here somewhere.”
     At first I couldn’t see her. My vision was blocked by Don Ho standing around drinking a pina colada. But something caught
     my eye—and there was romance, right behind him, jumping up and down and waving to me. So, I got up before dawn, went down
     to the beach, rolled up my jeans, waded in, and stood there in the pre-dawn grayness, playing my flute with the water washing
     around me and thinking about what this must have looked like when Captain Cook first came around Diamond Head, his sails flapping
     in the trade winds. There were a few other people on the beach, but they paid me no mind; they were there for the same reasons.
     When I finished, I heard the sound of applause from a long way off. I turned; it was romance. I caught a glimpse of her, just
     as the first ray of morning sunlight struck the barrier reef while she danced along it. And, my notebook says, “Soft winds
     blow easy, here in the night time, as Oahu lies bathing in the sweet scent of orchids. This skyplane will ride the west wind
     to morning and land in L.A. just after dawn.”
    The second example has to do with Iowa. Iowa is a very romantic, mystical place. I can’t explain it, but it’s here. Anybody
     can see the Rocky Mountains—they’re obvious. It takes a little more perspective to see the beauty of Iowa or the romance in
     the long sweep of North Dakota prairie west of Larimore’ Once when I was working in the woods south of Wadena, in northeast
     Iowa, it started to snow late in the day. I worked on. As I did, I began to feel a presence. What was it? The woods were filling
     up with snow. What was there? It took me a moment, but then I knew: It was Iowa. Iowa, like romance, doesn’t come up and pirouette
     before you, saying, “Hey, look, Fm beautiful” She just lies there, on hot June days, like a woman in the sun, while romance
     splashes around where the Winnebago runs to kiss the Shell Rock, just two miles below the place of my growing,
    Well, that’s enough. You get the idea. All I have left for you is a test of sorts (you knew there would be a test, didn’t
     you?). How are you going to know if you have lived the romantic life? Here’s how. On your dying bed, after all the living
     and doing, you must run this poem by turn-of-the-century poet R. M. Rilke through your mind:
    I