Headed to consult with someone who seems very close to organic instinct, I found myself Out walking in a part of a city at a time of day when most everyone else is in their car. Inside their Jetson suite complete with temperature control and automated and digitized back seat driver/ companion.
For a moment, I watch the cars. The ambient natural light slowly fades and the fluorescent glow ascends to a whistle pitch. The headlights and red lights unify if you blur your eyes a bit.
It's early. Even though the obvious signs evade the masses, winter has come bringing the dusk quickly now... and for me like water to my lips after a lifetime in the desert, as I am in love with the rain and all of his aspects. Especially his pending arrival, because when it comes to him I am always thirsty.
And while it is but the cusp of evening, the dark night in the street is alive and moving forward at an increasingly rapid pace, seeming to already race toward dawn.
I am just passing through. Always taking on the cloak of the alone, although I know this is impossible with the merry band of spirits I walk with.
But the others here, the ones outside. No cars or tiny universes to tuck them away from the realities that they so recklessly reproduce. The night for them is different. I can understand the rush to get on with it.
I'm not hungry but the smells of food confuse my body. I suspend a spike of pain as I remember the ones outside and what they must manifest in order to tolerate such sensory irony. Smokey cooking of meat and sauce. Wood Grilled and peppered with a buttery sage smell. All of it flows into me like a memory. I've gotten distracted and have to turn back my path.
I walk straight back over my own footsteps to a completely different view of the street scene I had just passed.
The restaurant already filled at this early hour sits on a peninsula between two alleyways. I love peninsulas. So driven out into the front lines. Isolated yet surrounded. Maybe it's a self metaphor. A common breed.
The walls of glass make it easy for me to asses the style. Upper scale, pseudo modern. You could smell the truffle oil and braised shortrib. The kind of place that all the normal ones flock to when they want to have a nice expensive meal.
I walked toward and past a scene of four middle aged people walking out having finished their meal at such a virgin hour. Right then I experinced something that is common for me but unusual to explain, a moment when the concept of time basically stops making sense in the concious way. It's kind of like everything is happening underwater.
As I passed, I noticed one man in particular very likely because of his height. There was another shorter man and they were very familiar in a non intimate way. Like co workers or old college mates but one of them coveted the other and they both knew it.
Two women were with them and then slipped giggling back into the restaurant while the tall man said
" I don't want to be part of that situation. " his voice filled with bravado and insecurity. Like he sweats every single word. I watched the women huddle away and wanted to think they were going to pee before getting in the car but it seemed just as likely that they were running back to do a quick yuppy bump. They both looked like aging cheerleaders. Pearl necklaces and J Crew slacks and matching sweaters,...I'm just saying. When my eyes felt nothing there they moved back to the two men and the tall one looked in my direction and for one brief moment we locked eyes.
Here is what I saw and felt.
I looked in and I saw east coast sensibility and cold touch-less silence except for a ticking clock.
Mother is very serious and distracted. There is no affection whatsoever. that is considered weak. I see an outside basement door on the ground with white chipped paint and a big rusted lock. He never went in but wanted to his entire childhood.
I saw the red fall leaves of an Ivy league college. Freedom. Inspiration in the written word!
I smelled wine and beer and marijuana enjoyed only occasionally with no real affect. I saw good grades and confidence. Girlfriends and a brief affair with an older friend of a parent in the city. Getting away from the east to the west. The great retreat.
Marriage and career security. Long drives along tree lined streets. Gravely driveways and interior decorators. I see a small glass dish where keys go and a wife who won't come to climax,....not really.
A red haired Irish setter named Chester. A constantly leaning business partner who wants membership at a country club among other materialistic ideals. Dignified gray hair at a family Christmas with warm scotch and a tattooed brother in law with nothing in common. Jazz on a Sunday evening while the light fades. Blue sheets. Over and over again. A small tight little BMW. A prescription for Xanax and tickets to the opera. There was one moment in a lake, naked with her under the stars. That felt like truth.
And then as I passed I saw his ruddy wine kissed cheeks and leveled tone. He and his tired wife would drive home quietly after whatever show they were going to and discuss the other couple. There would be harsh criticisms made. The buzz being worn down would take it's toll and they would silently question themselves as they drove up a dark street lined with pine trees and compromises into a garage that smelled new and clean. Blue sheets would take him back into the future of achievement. Tomorrow He would buy his Cologne in the department store catalogue at work and search the New Yorker magazine for interesting topics to discuss, and then categorize them for different people in his life. Some for his family, some for his " friends", business partner, college friend that he covets and his wife that he pretends to relate to.
I walk along and don't look back.
They still looked happy to me. Happy and normal and clean.
I feel a tinge of regret for all the normal lives being led out there. It looks so wholesome and rich to me but likely just because I have idealized the doldrums where my own life has taken on a less than mainstream storyline. Of course I am aware that I could be be wrong about all of it.....But I'm not.
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