It was somewhere around midnight, on the cusp of another turkey day full of giving thanks and togetherness and what have you. Driving down to LA, I realized and felt that, however minor and off-handed it seemed to be, this Thanksgiving was going to be different. Looking back on past such family gatherings, the questions always arise, “So how’s school? What classes are you taking? When do you graduate?” With those inquiries no longer applicable, there’s understandably a shift in focus; a shift towards the future. “What are you going to do now? Are you looking for a job?” With the brush of exaggeration stroking furiously, I coax a believable, if not altogether focused retort, hoping and quite confident that the ruse has worked. “Are you looking for a job?” Sure, jobs are fun. “Look into this company.” Ok. Except no, that sounds stupid. I don’t think I want to do that at all.
It was a time when that heavy satin curtain of mysticism between me and adulthood – which had slowly been falling for the last couple years – now lay motionless in a heap at the foot of reality. I finally get the joke. These people I had been listening to, without question, for years… my teachers, my parents, my bosses. Whatever had separated us before is gone.
Sitting there alone on the deck, and with the mushrooms hitting the peak of their poison, I have to close my eyes to stop the incessant chatter playing back in my brain. Deep breadth in. Deep breadth out. The until now distant murmur of the city, suddenly becomes a deafening growl, an orchestrated cacophony of departing planes, midnight traffic, night life, pleasures, and sins. It feels like the glass upon glass of wine has at once soaked my entire interior, as every pore in my body seems to be exhaling the soft bitter aftertaste of a certain cab that had been enjoyed earlier. Maybe the Coppola, maybe the Crusher, maybe the daunting twist-off top one. The memory’s lost and unfocused behind the city’s symphony howling in my eardrums. I open my eyes and a breath stops short as the eerie serenity of my environment floods back. There’s a full moon’s reflection on the Pacific coming from back above and behind the house, past this balcony and that groove of palm trees, and the boardwalk lights and the lifeguard tower, hitting the water just north of the Pier. All in one frame, and with a hand extended out, the reflection’s caught in a finger-formed crescent before my eyes and, to me, it is a thing of absolute beauty; a beauty capable of being experienced only by an over-analytical, hair-pulling man drunk silly on wine, high stupid on spliffs, and positively over the falls in a wood crate barrel named “Chocolate Mushroom Bars”.
[to be continued]
[to be continued]
