From the Past, With Love

 Hey,

I want to thank you for showing me how to watch the waves. 

Wherever you are I want you to know that I haven't changed. I hope you haven't changed either but I know I haven't, I kept that promise. It was honestly the least I could do for... everything I guess. 

I don't live home anymore I've long moved. But sometimes I when I walk into the boardwalk at night, when the beach is silent and there is the faintest smell of food trucks that are left alone at the night it almost feels the same. Especially when the glowing neon from the fairs are still hot in the air, then it almost feels the same. Now that I think about it when the crows flock fence post to fence post like schools of fish from a wale, that is when it almost feels the same.

But really none of those are right. It's like you told me about the streetlight effect: you only search for something where its easiest to look. So I think you were and are always with me, I just forget to remember it sometimes. 

That's why I love the waves. After school is out and my shift at the market ends I come here to the waves. Enamored in their rhythmic persuasion as they dance up and down the shore getting closer and closer to my spot in the sand but never quite reaching, I can always remember over here. 

 In my youth I remember us running through the cities as I would imagine our ancestors once did. They used vines, rivers, and birds, while we use concrete, car horns, and ego. I would get the paper cups and you would get the wine as we hopped rooftop to rooftop all evening long. Vibrations would ring out narrow sidewalks with our laughter and our heavy breath would hum in line with the sights of music and flavor of the lights. 

We go from small cafe to indie venue to botanic garden to planetarium to school to abandoned house to skating rink to small cafe. A journey with no destination. We keep going nowhere, nowhere turns into somewhere, somewhere turns everywhere until we end up at the pier just before dawn.

You point out at the waves, how with each stroke they pass energy in a circular motion, so that it is never still. You go on to talk about the moon, the oscillation, the gravity of it all, but I'm still stuck on the rotation. Quietly and eternally the waves crash on in an endless battle rotating every second of every day. And with it, we rotate as well.

I want to be sorry about all those things that I said to you. I want to be sorry about how I made you cry. I want to be sorry about who I was. But I am not, because every second with you was another second in blissful eternity. 

I was in class the other day when I was learning about a Greek myth. So it goes, humans used to live with two heads, four arms, four legs, and one heart. The gods decided to separate them to the humans we know today. After that happened humans suffered in misery for years because they couldn't eat and couldn't rest without their body whole. But for some people who were lucky enough they found their other half, their soulmate.

I don't know how much I believe in that. Still, that must be a horrible fate to be the ones that failed. To never accomplish happiness, to never have peace, to never have home. But like people say home isn't a place, its a feeling. 

That's why I wrote this letter, actually to thank you. Because every time I watch the waves, wherever I am, I'm at home.

I think maybe in an alternate universe we could have still been together. I was raw and new and you were sweet and devoted. I can see us even right now together here on this beach, with every crashing of waves an undiscovered path is forged for our future. And in that universe we are more than ink spots on this earth filled with brick, fireflies, and Monsters Inc. figurines, we are unbridled passion in an abyss of boundless possibility. 

But we don't live there, we live here, in front of waves that unpredictable and aggressive. No that is not right, we live here, in front of waves that are unknown. There is a tide, one that occurs every night that when taken afloat leads to adventure and wealth. But laid to waste, it drowns us in the sad morsels of a hideous fate: the present. 

And thus, here I am, like I have been for every night for every year for the last three years. Hoping I have the courage to take afloat on this tide and seek out my soulmate. But, like I have been for every night for every year for the last three years, I decide not to. 

Maybe tomorrow, I'll find my way home. 

With Love,

Yours

Part 2: The Adventure

     A distant thumping lay resonant in my head, perhaps echoing the distorting chaos occurring around me. It wasn't terrible chaos, every piece around me fit in its own certain, culminating way, however, it was hard to keep track of. In a way, it was sort of beautiful, with the air around me sparkling with a million opportunities in the hymn of electricity.  A chorus lights bleed into sight from every direction, slowly dissolving into nothing at all- and everything all at once. Mangled vibrations seeped from the wall- well rather, from the circular, never-ending tunnel. The rhythm of the opening and my breath slowly crept into unison to the point where it was impossible to tell where I had ended and where it had begun. The music of color and the sight of sounds began to ache in my mind began to rift once the flowing waves of restlessness rippled across the floor past my feet.
     I began to walk further into the ebbing flow of everything and marveled at every sight. It was as if God had written beauty in the tunnel with bright lights and friction. The more I walked the more I realized it was less like a tunnel with lovely sights and distant lights than it was a raw stream of consciousness, yet disrupting anarchic and alluring in its own way. In short, it was an infinite spiral. A beautiful symphony. A cacophony of breathlessness. An obscure tranquillity. A flickering omnipresence. An impossible possibility. An apex of everything I didn't know that I didn't know. It was here that life, though, and certainty lingered. And for a moment, I truly lost myself.
     Sitting in the middle of all of it was a small, little creature. I couldn't make out much more than its beady bright eyes, but I didn't have to. Just looking at it I knew it was just like me, a personality, taking a breath away from the constant loop of the outside. And then it ran. And then I chased it. Not to catch it, but to greet it as old two friends rejoining once again. My feet glided over the land, in a tight cadence that echoed through the spiral. The creature snuck up a tunnel and left the gyre. My spirit caught up a few minutes later.
      Gone was the overwhelming place of everything that I will ever do and now there was a room. It was just a room, there was nothing and it was dark, but that was a thing of itself. The dark nothingness felt like a cool stream of water I was wading through. It was, like the tunnel, a place out of space that didn't belong. There was nothing to see but around me, there was a nagging feeling of... feelings. It was the opposite of the tunnel, that was everything all at once, this was nothing all the time. A sort of asylum to rest. The border between her and everything else was nonexistent now and I was one with the black. Perhaps there was anything in here, and it was just waiting for me to make it real.
     And then, was an anachronism of even this timeless chamber, far ahead was a large white door. Or rather, when I came closer, I realized, it was an elevator. Inside was a single button, not labeled, just as obscure as everything else. No up or down I suppose, just the way its meant to be. I was waiting in an ocean of white for some time. A minute became an hour. And after an hour time got murkier. It took as long as what I imagine forever feels like, yet, I didn't mind. Then it stopped, and I got out.
     A skyline peeked over the horizon, with a muted silhouette against the sunrise filtering past the jagged shape of the skyscrapers. The yellow pervasive sun shined on everything, and when it shined on me, my rebirth was complete. I was just a person against the sun rays, but then, I knew I was everything I would ever be. With the sunrise, everything seemed more clear. The ocean was more brilliant, the city more exciting, and the hope more present. And in this glory, I basked until the sunrise had become just the sun.
      Now, I slept.
   
   

Part 1: The Fortune

     Keep your eyes open, an adventure of a lifetime soon awaits you. 
    A chaliced aroma of the "gateway drug", the chicken crackled in the air against the sweeter melody of the dumplings and the rhythm of the taboo, yet delicious spicy rabbit filled the air. The harsh neon lights that filtered the room were like an unground rock concert: unchecked, sizzling and distorted. Most of the ceiling was adorned with a magnificent bronze dragon, magnificent not as in it was grande or orate but rather in the sense that the dragon could come alive at any moment and it would have been as if it was always alive.
     Chairs, tables, menus, around them was the blazing red covering that surrounded the room in fervor and excitement, perhaps happy to entrance the customers like a vintage American diner from the '40s. But it couldn't have been, the Americans were the ones before the last to inhibit the restaurant. I remember that was during my painting phase and every day after practicing listening to vinyl getting ready to paint I would go down and have a simple hamburger, chips, and fries. The Americans were gone now after them was the German Grill and now it was the Taste of China. But that didn't matter. That wasn't what I was here for.
     "Are you done yet, sir?" Two round and awaiting eyes popped out from the bouts of visible light from between the shadows. A little girl, with a hair of mahogany, sprouted up in front of me, with outreached hands that grasped at the heavy, thick plates that it looked so sweet and comical. I hadn't touched the food yet, I was waiting. I don't yet know for what as I had come to known the fortunes didn't always arrive immediately, they snuck up like a hunter does to a deer, getting closer and closer, cocking the gun, aiming the bullet, all the while the deer peacefully eats grass and in the next second its dead. They came to me just as menacingly yet the "death" turned into a pleasant rebirth.
     The lights in the restaurant began to slowly dim, leaving just me in the spotlight as a patient nudge to tell me to get the hell out of there. I nodded at the girl who took up my food and hurriedly placed it back in the kitchen. Keep your eyes open, an adventure of a lifetime soon awaits you. The fortune was vague today but it was always this way. Tonight was four weeks in a row that I had ordered food from here, yet I didn't touch my plate, only the fortune cookie. That was all I wanted.
     The wind carried me home, today it was a gentle breeze crossed with the shine of the shop's lights across the street, turned on for the single customer who quietly hid out in these little shops before being forced to confront the world outside. A light rain sleeted down coats and collars amongst the bare street as people wandered back home. The boulevard looked like a painting here, yet it looked unfinished instead of glorious. The stoic faces littering the sidewalk, the road was grey and bleak, and the stores were all bland and alike as if someone had drawn out an outline for a street yet forgot to follow up and make the people happy, the road bright and pleasant, and the shops unique and alluring. Alas, everything was a dim reminder of what it once was, all of it simply meandering along for the next day to come.
     It all started with the first fortune at the new restaurant, you will meet a lifelong friend today. Hours later while biking home I had heard the whines of a stray dog looking for a home. I took it back and rejuvenated its scraggly fur with a new wash and soon the lonely dog became my sole companion wherever I went. Coincidence, perhaps, but there were too many coincidences that it turned into a pattern. Maggie was the soulmate at midnight, the promotion to Executive Pilot was the reward long deserved, and the flooding of the apartment was the disaster in paradise. It was systematic in that each event occurred only a few hours after I had opened them from the restaurant as if waiting each day to tell me my destiny. And it became my ritual to wait for it.
     I stumbled down to the subway station, eager to chase the next order in my fate. I was alone with just my coffee colored shoes spilling onto the platform, or at least I hoped I was. The city was drearier in this time of night, almost deathly in a way. This state of raw abandonment was also scary in its own way and I shuffled my feet to the edge of the line, farther than I should be, staring down the dark void of the tunnel. My arms clutched the pillar to my right, tracing the cold worn out designs of fake gold and the fragments of hope.
     In the heavy silence, I began to gently close my eyes, struggling to stay awake. The world became a blur and everything I saw acted like a series of pictures with my eyes clicking open and shut like a camera, with the clicks getting longer and the pictures shorter until I was drifting in and out of consciousness. Every five minutes I would wake up with no recollection of my falling asleep except for the indication of the movement of the pile of snails in the far right corner of the worn-out station. The subway and I were alike, both subject to captivating boredom with our best days behind us and just a single task to await each morning. One of us was scratched out, dulled with the whims of humanity shadowing sullen windows and oily appearances as to not mind or even care for trivial matters anymore; the other was a subway.
     Before I allowed myself to fully submit into slumber my eyes caught a distant green light shimmering under one of the tracks. As I knelt closer to get a look I realized that they weren't lights they were animals. I took a quick glance to the left, for any trains to come and darted down and across the rails, past the warnings of danger, and into the small tunnel: an adventure of a lifetime.

Past City Limits

It was the same city I had grown up to know, yet now the same glistening shade and gleaming sunshine turned into unbearable heat and unrelenting shadows. In the same great towers and nuanced streets that I would regularly explore turned into a gross division in class and race which then turned into gross grief that equally created disarray and loss in all. A shy nuisance that hid away from the majestic skyscrapers that never cease to shadow the idyllic forest, the roads that cover the peaceful ponds, and the many structures hiding the sky’s conciliate of clouds.

Object- there was none.  Most would be poisoned with the remarks of mortal dullness, gossip, and dyspepsia.  One sees what they want to see and what was sawn was the outline of distant nature.  But the eye of the traveler blazes bright through them all. A bond had been corded between use and sensations of fervor had sparked to life gifting tremor to those around.

A sunrise, plaguing the hints of darkness and gifting serenity to the dull landscape of the rainforest, assuring the deep dark caves, the bone idle trees, and water flowing in a pattern of a golden eternal braid that however dark the night prevailed light would always break through chasing away the shadows of the past. Quickly thereafter a shimmering gold disk began to climb up with its splattering colors growing more vivid in passing time until it finally found its place in the softness of the solemn sky.  A ray of skylight shone a pathway to the soul of the sky.

An expanse of mountains, layered with a traces of trees, green, yellow, scarlet and orange, but their bare tops were scarfed and betrothed with snow. It was as if an angel had laid to rest on this ground and instead of fleeing away after its slumber it chose to stay and it chose to grow and twinkle. From jagged rocky outlooks, puddles filtered with white powder, and in the fields, we could see the amber glint of rivers and the occasional mirror-like flash of a mountain lake. The glorious white pyramids seemed unreachable but still a delicate beauty, one that you would never attempt to garner but instead sit back and envelope into your gaze.

A desert, littered with infinite expanses of dunes and bright summer glazes. Empty, but not barren, enjoying an endless stream of sand that crumbles upon touch, which retells a glorious orange hue hiding secrets of scurrying animals and bright plants. Under the painful exterior hides moments of ambrosia, in a quiet oasis. The heat race in the parse shrubbery, creating an ever-changing mosaic of light and dark,, and with it a juxtaposed melody and chorus of the sheltered winds across the valley.

A meadow, hosting wildflowers as a cacophony of color on the fading green: pink daisies, blue cornflowers, red poppies, and cute, cliche sunflowers. There was no coordination like the displays in town, just a wild dance of hues decided upon by the wind. A lush breeze swept over me, carousing around the tall grasses, hopping over the chatter of a lonely brook, and dancing over the trees of pine coves before finally flying into the clear blue hum of the sky. Every few minutes a cloud would float and float away, and before long I would keep track like counting white sheep before bedtime. A lullaby that lulled me to sleep in the luster of sunshine.

A sunset, trancing shimmering platinum and sparkling white nuances of land were bathed in the whip of misty water churning the ground to froth amongst the barkless trees of sunset.  Sprout above where the sky was basting deep hues of pink and lilac, the water light and dark blue as the sunset, the breath-taking golden sunset sets in the wide eternal ocean. Sinking in this chalice I spied the moon painting the silhouettes of trees in the background of a starry night.  Just behind me was a mystical ocean of whales, sharks, and dolphins, unsettling but somehow proved to be captivating my soul towards the heart of the sea.

Thousands of mountains to venture, a thousand beaches to dip your feet in, a thousand deserts to traverse, thousands of meadows to get lost on, a thousand stunning grasslands, and an infinite amount of sunrises and sunsets to appreciate. Countless soul captivating, heart-wrenching, mind-boggling idyllic scenes to see. And all of it is out there.

And Another

   The silence of the house was eerily so, and the stationary positions of the object in my room were just as I had left it just six weeks ago. I waited a few minutes at the door without entering, just letting all the relief and desolation wash over my body.  The absence of sound created a sense of privacy and dominance: they were a prevailing image of the person that I had used to be, before all of what had happened.

    It was hard for me to pinpoint the origin of the feeling in my head. It was what the feeling I first succumbed to at three, watching a golden disk sprout above where the sky was basting deep hues of pink and lilac hen the water, light and dark blue as the sunrise beckoned in front of me. And again at seven where I had spied the moon painting silhouettes of trees in the background of a starry night on a pier.  Just behind me was a mystical ocean of whales, sharks, and dolphins, unsettling but somehow proved to be captivating my soul towards the heart of the sea. I had last felt it at fourteen while hiking up a path leading into a mountain looming over in the vast distance. There was a magic in watching the necklaces of powder wash down into the chasm that caught it down below.

    I plumped my bag down spilling over all of its contents and strolled over to my windowsill. I looked on into the early morning where the spread of loneliness seemed to have expanded since before. What did all of those moments have in common? Peace? Solitude? No. It was the base of existence, the motor of every living being... it is the need of one's body as it is the goal of one's spirit: joy.

    I stepped into the shower and embodied myself into the rush of water that sprayed onto me. Awaiting the slow painful moments that were to lie in front of me. I had thought I had wanted to wipe off the grime and sweat that I had held but I realized that it the dirt I was trying to get rid of, it was the reminder. The remainder of the sense of… just not wanting to exist. Not specifically to commit suicide, just the wish to disappear and stop being. The will to allow me to enter the land of apathy.

    I remembered that the French had a word for this… l'appel du vide. The call of the void. The urge to self-destruct during simple, everyday behaviors. But not for suicidal purposes, but rather to just stop your own existence as to relieve the stress that you bring to the others around.

    I don’t like other people, I don’t really try to get out of the comforts of my life. Sometimes I like to go into the library of my house, off all the lights, and just stare at the world outside. I sometimes play classical music, not because I like it, in fact, it annoys me, it is just way too boring, but it helps drown the voices out, which helps. I really like people watching, I’ve done it for as long as I can remember, it lets me get out of my own try to embody myself in someone else.

    I lead a rather little life, well, interesting, and fun, at times, but a little life. And sometimes, at times like these I can’t help but wonder if I do because I like to, or because I wasn’t good enough, or smart enough, or a risk taker. I mean, sometimes go for a walk and I see lovely things but I recognize lines