October 18, 2012

• Still Reading

  “I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was–I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that’s why it happened right there and then, that strange red afternoon.” — Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Ch. 3

  The truth is always sweeter the first time around.

  So I spend the whole day at home, wrapping another commercial I’ve worked on. There was a feeling that was slowly rising from what seemed like the connection of my stomach to my hands. It was the despair I was afraid would manifest sooner or later. And it did today, like a raw, concentrated darkness; a phantasm of fears that escaped, combined in spirit, and finally possessed me.

  I took it to dinner at one of my recurrent haunts; the Vietnamese noodle restaurant in the middle of Silverlake. I felt like the people who dined there, cooked there, served there, understood me so my defenses didn’t have to be so high. It was one of the few places that maybe I could find someone who I wouldn’t mind talking to. Anyway, my stupor and I, we yelled at each other in the car on the way to the restaurant. We parked on one side of the four lanes of Sunset Blvd. And we sat there for a few solid minutes in the darkness, yelling, brooding, crying, letting the numbness sink. And then we talked each other into crossing the busy street into the restaurant. And I blinked at the person at the front counter, grinning through gritted teeth, asking quickly if I could sit at the downstairs area. She didn’t see our inner struggle.

  I walked down, sat at a booth and I think I stared out into myself; at the wall in front of me. A woman named Yuni came up to me with a menu. There was no use really looking at anything else. I always get the same thing.

  She comes back and I order a Pho Tai. Maybe I should order some wine? No. “What tea do you like here?” I ask her. This is the first time we venture outside of the normal server and customer conversation. “Orange blossom is good.” I squint my eyes at her and she tries to think of something else.

  “What’s something calming?”

  “…There’s no chamomile..” She peruses longer the same choices she already knows. “Jasmine.”

  I agree and order it.

  “Whats your name?” I ask her.

  “Yuni, what’s yours?

  “I’m April.”

  “Now, I know your name!”

  “I always come here.”

  “I know. But you just keep to yourself. You order, you eat, you keep quiet, and then you leave.”

  Yes that was me. I smile.

  Maybe this part of the conversation happened sooner or later but she says, “My birthday is in April.”

  “Oh yeah? My birthday’s in April too. What’s your day?”

  “April 29.”

  “Mine’s April 27.”

  Her eyes grow bigger. “We’re the same. How would you describe yourself?”

  “Calm. Intellectual.” Well, I am.

  “I’m calm too. Really mellow. Do you laugh a lot? Even when you’re sad?”

  “Yes! I do! I laugh when I’m sad, when I’m angry, when things are going crazy.”

  She laughs.

  “Because it’s funny!”

  We both agree.

  I admit, “I was just laughing before I got here. Because I’m sad.”

  “I’m sad too.  I was just crying five minutes ago. And now I’m laughing. What are you sad about?”

  “I fell in love. And the man finally broke my heart. I knew he was going to do it before I got into it. I knew. And it finally happened.”
   I smile at her again. She understands.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why are you sad?” I ask her.

  “My mother’s in the hospital. She had a minor heart attack. And I find out my niece was being molested. By her babysitter’s husband.”

  The world is put into perspective.

  Then she smiles, tears on the tops of her eyes. She hugs me and tries to comfort me when she is the one who needs love.

  My selfish mind doesn’t realize this. I eat the pho she puts in front of me, mind in a cloud of the glass of wine I had drunk prior to driving here. But my emptiness is quelled for a moment. Thanks to the woman who thought she had no other strength to give. The last of it she gave to me.

  At the end, she slips me a small glass of wine. “Drink this. It’ll make you feel better.” She giggles a bit. I want to hold her hand and let her cry.

  I drink the soup, the tea, the water, the wine. And I am full and full. I stop behind her before I leave and give her a hug. She asks, “do you feel better?”

  “Yes.” I did. Even if it was a little bit. “Thank you.” So I left Yuni there and the voice calmed for a while.

  But after I closed the door behind me, it came full force again. Why is loneliness such a powerful creature?

  I walked to my car with the same halfway death wish. But no one ran me over. So I got in, drove off, and passed the Vista Theatre and the Los Feliz 3 Theater. Nothing appealed but “Looper.” “No you don’t wanna fucking see that again!” I yelled at my weak self. She wanted to watch “Looper” to dwell on his memory. The memory that imagined he was Bruce Willis traveling to the past, thinking of the woman who saved his life in the future. His future wife. Maybe that future wife could be me. What a strange fantasy. “Don’t fucking watch Looper,” was good advice.

  Home again, the bouts of talking loudly to myself are getting worse. I lose awareness when I’m doing it now. I’m afraid this will happen in a group of people and they will all know how removed from reality I am.

  And then I called Nick. I wonder if I’m using up my friendship favors with him. I’m the girl who calls him way too often from across the sea. He lives in Taiwan. I hope I’m not hurting him. Sometimes I just get so lonely, and I think I left some part of myself with him, and I need that part to interact with me.

  I have this fantasy of walking from Glendale at dawn all the way to the ocean, or at least how far the sunset will take me. Friday’s a good day.

  Good Night.

   

   

  • 2:58 am
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