12/2006

Driving to the beach in the middle of the night

I have a vision myself lying on the beach in the middle of the night... the sound of the ocean waves lull me to sleep, a cool breeze blows over me, the smell of sand and salt. And I sleep the kind of deep sleep that only peace and solitude could bring. And I’m alone.

When I was little, I was swimming in my neighbor’s pool, and I felt like I could stay underwater forever. But I came up just because I felt like it had been long enough, and to this day, I think I blew my one chance to live as a mermaid.

After Juan died, I was so upset and confused. But then I had a dream that me and Charlie and Milena and Vicky were at Lafreniere Park having a picnic, and it was afternoon, and it was the kind of sunny that makes you forget all your worries. And then the sky opened and Juan came down and everything was ok. When I woke up I felt happy, because I got to see his shining face. He was nineteen and I was twenty, and ten years later, he’s still one year younger than me.

One time I was running in Griffith Park, and it was late afternoon, and I found a pretty nice uphill on the road in the shade, so I started sprinting up from the sign to the second STOP sign and jogging back down, over and over again. I wasn't getting tired, so at some point I became convinced that if I kept doing that then SOMETHING was going to happen. Like P.T. Anderson would come driving down the hill and see me, or at least someone I knew would drive by and say hi. I kept running up and down and up and down, and you know what happened? Nothing, it just got dark. And I was disappointed.

Once I was in a some stupid meeting in some stupid office with white walls and vertical blinds, and it was dusk. And outside the office window was a tree, but because of the time of day the tree was just a black silhouette against a light gray sky. And for some reason I was thinking about the song "Blackbird”... And just then outside the window I saw the black silhouette of a bird playing in the branches. And I had a sense of delight, because in that moment, I saw the world differently.

Then you wrote me a note, and I taped it under my desk. And we went to a concert and it was misty and I told you “I’m happy I know you". And we drove to the beach in the middle of the night. And it was really cold, but we slept there anyway. And I was just enjoying being alive, and I had a sense of wonder, and I wasn’t alone.