Elegy to the End of Summer

This was actually about yesterday's thoughts.

The past few days have been bereft with signs of the ending of summer. Cool, cloudy days with intermittent showers, the browning of the leaves of the maple trees outside of my lab, these signs all foreshadowing the start of the rainy season.

I woke up today under a dimly lit crystal blue sky, receding clouds from the cloudiness of days past off in the distance, the faint rays of a sun still barely risen giving my room a shadowy feel. For some reason, I could hear the sounds much more clearly than I had earlier in the summer: the sounds of occasional car passing by, the sounds of the leaves rustling in the breeze, and perhaps mixed with other sounds, like the sound of birds.

This blending of sounds is indescribable, something only detectable by my subconscious which triggers other thoughts and memories of my earlier years when I would wake up to the exact scene and mood, having being heckled to sleep the night before, jetlagged and profusely complaining that I was not tired. The previous night (or two nights ago, for one was lost somewhere on the plane ride) in China I had fallen asleep to the sounds of a never-sleeping city, and I had woken up back to the waning summer of my native Northwest.

When I was younger, the days after my return from my annual summer trip to China were the last gasp of my summer break, the last days of foreboding before the next school year started.

Now, today, I feel the same. My summer is about to end. Two reasons:

Today was my second-to-last day at my summer research position in Dr. Kastrup’s lab. Two summers ago, when I was a ‘summer student’ at Professor Miura’s lab, I wished for two things in my next research experience. One of them was to experience working in a lab in an English-speaking setting. The other was to be able to design and conduct my own experiments. I vowed to be more serious the second time around. I did experience all these wishes to some degree, though in retrospect I still could have been more dedicated.

Perhaps more importantly, and the reason that triggered this sudden artistic outburst in a summer so depraved of all things artistic, today was the second-to-last day that my brother would attend his daycare. When I picked him up in the afternoon, I noticed that he showed indication of remorse by the end of his time at the daycare. He had to be reminded by one of the teachers that it was almost his last day.

My brother’s actions made me think of my own childhood. I did not have the luxury of having childhood friends, having changed schools (and daycares, when I was younger) multiple times. Still, every time I made friends, and even some that, at the present time in the past, I would call best friends. So, what purpose do these hundreds of supposedly strong, but ephemeral friendships we make as children serve?

The truth is, (at least in my opinion), these friends don’t aid you through your life’s journey, but rather, just make a certain part of it easier. They add the embellishment to a normally plain road through life. They are like the bed of blooming flowers on the side of the road: pretty, but once walked past, remembered no more.

Sometimes I think it’s good to make a mental note of all the friends we have made in our younger years.

Le Gaspard de la Nuit

Just don't get the wrong idea.

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Well, how shall I begin?

… After I have spit out all the butt-ends of my ways, how shall I begin?

So here I stand again, in a suit, except this time it’s my own new suit, instead of my father’s old one. As I walk outside, the air hit me. What logic, hosting a formal dance on the warmest day of the year!

Outside, a stifling haze fills the air, subduing the brightness of what should be a clear day. The air has a murky stillness; insects and moths lazily flutter in the air, their bodies reflecting in the late afternoon sunlight.

It is hot – perhaps the hottest day of the year, a day where people pack the beaches, or where the more introverted ones whittle away their time in a nice air conditioned room. Those who are outside act methodically; they have a purpose and a direction in mind. Such a day is not one for leisure walkers.

Even in full dress, I manage to keep cool, as I walk down a lawn, extending my arms to catch what little breeze can manage to stir the humid air.

- 

There is something enigmatic about this kind of heat. It enshrouds our bodies upon exposure, but does not inebriate your mind. We all supposedly are able to blend and adapt to our surroundings, that is, until we actually become aware of our surroundings. The second we do, a cascade of messages in the mind tell us, and make us painfully aware, for the rest of the day, just how hot and humid it outside.

The heat stifles our minds, invades our thoughts until we can think of nothing but the duality of the uncomfortable heat, and of the moment we will be removed from such weather. The heat can also make us restless, perhaps, incessant wanderers and chatterers. It changes us in ways only our sweat can express.

- 

So I’m at it again. A year removed from my old life, a year in a new setting, a year spent casting away the more undesirable elements of my old self, a year spent trying to move on and improve. Yet it has come to this again.

Nothing more than the soft scraping of a pen against a pocket-sized notebook. Nothing more than my thoughts on paper.

Once again, I remove myself and simply do what feels natural – have my thoughts pour onto the paper through an organized stream of ink. It has helped me regain my cool, however.

Alone, outside the venue, with only the distant sounds of a conversation in Chinese and the fragmented birdsong as background music, I feel at ease. The moon is high in the sky, flush against the remnants of the sunset. In this state, I feel and envelop every sliver of each breeze that passes.

I can for the ride, not the experience. I came for the product, not the process. Yet I feel this innate unease, as I feel myself calmly melting into the dusk.

- 

What nonsense. Why did I ever think, for a time, that I could change who I fundamentally am? Is this a question again, of the villain’s dilemma: to be or not to be what you are? All sunlight has just about faded, and the breeze has picked up, toning down the intense heat of the day.

A year has passed, but has it been a year of travelling in a line towards the end of the rainbow, or has it just been a year travelling in a circle? A fairly witty person would quip that I have travelled in a zigzag, or perhaps in a crudely drawn circle (think of a rough freehand sketch of a circle). Perhaps he is right.

The night is now setting in, and I am faced with a choice: whether to return to those lies which have given me a false sense of progress and hope, or to let the night consume me.

- 

Of course, I could have done something to mask this, but I chose not to, instead relying on the fundamental nature of these events and their relation to me, to guide my actions. So, I’m back where I was a year ago, with the pen movements of my hand barely discernible under the faint moonlight.

Have I any fortitude to force such a moment to return, force such a resonating declaration to once again overcome me, or shall I be one with the night? For the night is a great companion for me, all the better so, for it gives me reasons to dodge and delude myself to the point where I believe nothing but that of the past.

At this moment, the passing of a year stands cemented, trapped in unbreakable stone, and for all I care, infinitely distant away. Perhaps I am who I am, and no amount of the shifting of the sands of time will change, for the in the end, the sands may shift, but they will always remain on the same beach.

- 

“Do you know what a writer’s high is?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s that feeling that gives you chills, that feeling that sets you free…”

- 

I feel like I’m able to float. Perhaps I am floating on the wings of my own existentialist rant.

- 

Once again, another blur, another night, another memory to look back on and shudder at: that was my night. As I walk back, still in full dress, under the stillness of a cool night, I feel entranced in my own bubble with nothing but “Commissioning a Symphony in C” to comfort me.

I’m not sure if this is angst. Angst seems too dark of a word to describe my state of mind. Angst gives off connotations of a deep and sickening depression. No, what I feel cannot really be described in word or song.

All I see is this image of a kid trapped inside his own bubble sandbox world, a kid who runs around stomping on each of the sandcastles in the sandbox, but for some reason, unable to keep up pace with how quickly the sandcastles regenerate.

That must be me.

So after all this, it has just been a cycle. One year, one cycle. Perhaps the sandcastles will grow faster next year.

Cue the next cycle.

My Lovely Night.

In a Farewell to Arms, Hemingway actually relied heavily on the use of the the rain as an important recurring image. 

Rain is lovely during times of sorrow.

------

Why did I even do this? I had woken up before dawn, and by the time it was time to leave I probably looked like a post-apocalyptic zombie. No, perhaps not that dramatic. Nor I bet anyone could tell. It was mainly what I felt. Those feelings dictated what I felt.

I had no inspiration even to go to that event. I was deathly tired, laying on my bed, half-apathetic, half ambivalent towards even going to it. Then why did I even go in the first place? Perhaps it was some innate desire, or some subconscious supposing part of my inner soul that some worthy element in indulging.

No, the second I arrived, I felt that I was out of place. I was not supposed to be here, I did not want to be here, I questioned the very existence of my being at this time and place, and when surrounded by a maelstrom of obnoxious people who obviously won’t remember anything valuable that you say to them during the night, it seemed that I was the odd one out. Ironic, since I did stick out with what I chose to wear. But I don’t know why; I had absolutely no motivation nor interest in dealing with any of these people. I don’t know why. So I just flipped over my cup in a self-designating sign of resignation over the crowded steps of the staircase and left.

It had started raining nearly an hour ago. Now, the rain fell in steady, large drops that fell on you and you could feel that they fell on you, but in the kind of state I was feeling, the rain seemed a kind of relief. I saw a flash of lightning. Walking home alone seemed such poetic justice to such a night, such a night I had no interest in, and such a night that I only tried to elongate my participation in through my own dogged subconscious and innate sinful desires.

I saw a flash of lightning.

And through the pelting rain I walked, walked past the elevated train, walked past closed shop fronts and a closed coffee shop in which I had walked through an hour ago in search of something to eat. I saw a flash of lighting.

I guess it wasn’t really a flash, since its reflected illuminated the whole sky, the low-lying clouds of grey blanketing the sky, a sky grey but brilliantly tinted orange by the lights of the downtown. I saw the sky being lit up by the flash of lighting.

In fact, the lightning came every few seconds.

I couldn’t hear the sound of the thunder, maybe through the pelting rain it was muffled, maybe through my troubled mind I wasn’t able to think of anything other than the sound of the pelting rain.

Of course, I still saw the flash of lightning flashing the night sky a shade of bright blue light every few seconds.

So why did I even do this? Did it seem some kind of poetic justice, that I would be walking home in the pelting rain with lightning flashing every few seconds and nothing else but myself and my thoughts to comfort me while I walked through the pelting rain and watching the lighting illuminate the night sky every few seconds without hearing thunder which made it seem like an unfinished conclusion.

It seemed like poetic justice.

I don’t give a damn if I catch a cold tomorrow.

It was poetic justice, letting myself purposefully disappoint myself by giving into my terrible, sinful, subconscious desires, letting myself do something stupid, letting myself walk out in a fit of rage, accompanied by the pelting rain and the lightning which illuminated the sky every few seconds.

So I walked down the middle of the street, not really caring if cars were around me, though at this hour there were very few cars on the street, and all I could hear was the pelting of the rain, the large raindrops coagulating on my shirt but I still didn’t care, and all I could do was watch the orange-tinted night sky being illuminated by the flashes of lighting that happened every few seconds.

The light of the streetlamps glazed through the now misty and foggy air. So did the headlights of the cars. Only a few were stopped at a red light ahead. Perhaps I could walk in the middle of the road for a few more seconds, and just feel the rain wet my shirt and pants, watch and feel myself step inadvertently into puddles of water and not caring if my shoes were wet though earlier in the day I had to deal with heavy rain, except there was no lighting, and I had an umbrella, but shoes still were drenched and I thought it was dreadful to deal with wet shoes, but now I cared not, as I saw a flash of lightning illuminate the night sky again.

Finally, I was almost back to where I had to be and almost to a place where I would be out of the rain. 

Though at this point, I really was not consciously guiding myself back towards where I needed to be, and all I see was the dim light of the streetlamps half-heartedly trying to pierce through the misty sky.

I hear a helicopter.

And then I opened the door, and was out of the pelting rain but I was already soaked and probably was going to have a cold tomorrow. Such poetic justice to such a night. 

Like the Wind in the Trees

So recently I was inspired by a friend's works to write something in a different style, in contrast to the [pseudo]fiction works I normally write.

---

You know, when people arrive at a new place, they always have that first thing that they must do, such a first thing that brims with expectation and burns with desire. I could think of a few things that I always had to do as soon as possible when I arrived somewhere. The first thing that I had to do when I visited California was to get In-N-Out. When I arrived back in Evanston for the start of a new term I would always get my first meal at the local Five Guys, as it was the first restaurant that I entered in Evanston. If I returned back to China, the first thing that was on my mind was to collapse on a bed after not having had much quality sleep on the plane ride.

Vancouver – I hadn’t really thought about that. I mean, I’m going home, right? That should suffice. But that’s not special enough. It seems too pedestrian to label ‘going home’ as your most urgent, must-do, thing upon returning to the city around which you lived most of your life.

Anyways, that question was on my mind as I walked through the very familiar last pair of automatic glass doors, the doors that separated the interior of the Vancouver International Airport from the outside world. Then I thought of an answer.

The second I would walk outside, I would exhale. Not any regular exhalation, but one in which I would try to exude as much air as warm as possible from my system. I wanted to see my breath condense. So the tiny child was filled with expectant glee as I walked past the crowd of people at the airport exit waiting to meet up with people, friends waiting for friends talking amongst themselves, as friends, while waiting for their friend to arrive, and also, more formalized airport greetings of people holding up signs that usually had a name in large print. Actually, I was singularly focused on just getting out of the airport to see my breath condense, that I paid no attention to the composition of the crowd of waiting people. I based my description off of what I had seen the tens of other times I had been in this exact position.

Seeing my breath? Well, most people would look at me with a perplexed face and would wonder why I came back to Vancouver just to see my breath. I would tell them that I was also returning home. They would then retort that since I valued seeing my own breath so much that it was the singular first thing that was on my mind after stepping out of the airport, that I valued it more than going home. Isn’t that a contorted form of logic? Of course that was not true.

Perhaps if I told them about how unseasonably warm it was in Chicago for the past two weeks they would see my logic a bit clearer. I had often bragged to my Californian friends, by showing them the 80 degree plus temperature readings in Evanston, that we had stolen their lovely, warm and sunny Southern Californian weather, and transplanted it to the freezing Midwest. Indeed such warm weather really had no place there, but nobody seemed to complain. When I left for break, the trees were already in a fuller blossom than they had been when I visited the campus for the first time in late April last year.

Owing to the high humidity of the Northwest in the winter, the first exhalation I had was in a sense, exhilarating; I saw my breath streak out in a steamy mess from my mouth and just spill all over the surrounding airspace before dissipating. Such a magical feeling.

Rage Over a Cup of Spilt Noodles

It's been a while since I posted anything.

Well, what I have below is unlike anything I've ever done. The idea came from a terrible event which had just happened to me tonight (well not really terrible, but it seemed terrible in the instantaneous context after the event occurred).

---

Opps my hand slipped.

WHAT SLIPPED?

SHITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT.

Look at that lovely steaming mass of tangled, salty, fatty goodness, sprawled out on my desk. Look at how fluidly that yellow fluid diffuses. My spoon looks like a lost relic in the sand!

AHH IT’S ON MY NOTEBOOK, AND MY MAGAZINE!

(In a rage I throw my notebook down on the ground – “not like that’s gonna be ever useful again… (what with all the stains on it)”)

The mass is still diffusing… slowly… slower… expectantly…

MUST GET SOMETHING TO CLEAN UP MESS. Toilet paper! No… wait… I have my own stash of kitchen paper.

USE ALL THE ROLLS!

The globby mass creeps off of the desk into the trash bin, a slow, but rather steady, waterfall. Those noodles don’t look edible anymore, do they?

Now to throw away the cup (it still has a few loose noodles in it) – what a waste!

And now my desk smells like powered chicken.

So does my notebook. And one corner of my magazine is tearing off.

I can revel in all my gloriousness caused by this terrible incident. I did so, by drinking a cup of water.

Long Night's Journey into Day

Happy Thanksgiving!

--------

This again…

“Perhaps Tolstoy was right,” said Jacques Dubois. He had recently just visited his friends from high school. During this reunion, the primary event in his family, which had been occurring for the past few years, and culminating in the day before the reunion, had clouded his mind, made him unhappy, and therefore he felt like he was unable to connect with his friends, to revel in the same passions and fancies as he did with his friends the years prior. In fact, thoughts of this event were still in his head as he was driving back down to California. These thoughts ranged from despondent to suicidal in nature, and for some reason, these thoughts always seemed to string themselves in such a way that always ended in some sort of death. “How macabre!” he would exclaim after each string of thoughts had passed, and then would feel a rumbling in the car, signifying that he had a lapse of concentration on his driving, and had swerved out of the lane over to the side of the road.

Jacques’ family was, in his father’s words, French expatriates living in America. The family was small; of four people. Jacques had a younger sister of six years old. The father and mother, Marcel Dubois and Marie Le, had been married for over twenty years before the culmination of the event happened. Marie and Marcel were both ardent politicians. Marie often travelled to France and Quebec to partake in the politics during the election season, Marcel was a leading member of the Socialist Party. And so, Marie happened to meet Marcel during the election season that would eventually end in Mitterrand being elected for a second term. Marcel, in Marie’s words, “swept me off the ground so quickly and with such strength and elegance that I remained floating on air.” Before the election results had been announced, they resolved to marry.

The newly-wed couple decided to settle down in Marie’s family home in Eugene, Oregon, seeing as they still lacked the financial means to buy their own home. They had their first child, a boy, Jacques, two years after their marriage. They resolved to love him with all their heart. For those next two years, more than ever, Marie and Marcel loved each other through the common bond of their childhood, perhaps more passionately than during their engagement. Marcel, during those fragile infant years of the child, decided to take a leave from French politics and participated in the much more local Quebec political circuit, in which he could go to Quebec and back within a day, if needed. As a result from his political dabbling, Marcel, and later Marie, ended up being citizens of France, the United States, and Canada.

However, as Jacques became the age in which children normally start attending school, Marcel once again found the allure of French politics irresistible, and once again joined the Socialist Party circuit. He urged Marie to stay with Jacques in the United States, as he ardently held the belief that the American educational system was superior to the French or Canadian educational systems. The family was still happy, nonetheless. Marcel, owning to the lenient nature of the French work calendar, was still at home for slightly less than half of the year. Marie took joy in watching Jacques grow, marking each bit of progress she saw in him a diary.

Marie came from a family of independent-minded individuals. By the time Jacques was in his last year of elementary school, she felt this urge to once again return to the political scene. She had been dabbling in political discussions and meetings all during Jacques’ childhood, but those paltry meetings did not satiate her desire for political involvement. She resolved, by the time Jacques reached adolescence, to once again go abroad for part of the year. Thus, when Jacques entered middle school, Marie began teaching him responsible housekeeping in addition to his supplemental lessons.

In the same time period, a change came over Marcel. He saw that his political career was stagnating. While he eventually rose to become a prominent figure in the Socialist Party, he felt as if his familial responsibilities prevented him from rising further. He resolved to make sure that Jacques entered the business field, ensuring that Jacques would not fall down the same path as he did. He began to formulate a plan for Jacques. He would enter Stanford, do his undergraduate studies in some technical field, and then go on to business school at Stanford. Marcel was particularly enamored with Stanford because it was the best American university in a warm climate. Marcel hated cold climates; he always avoided visiting Jacques and Marie in Eugene during the cold, wet, autumn and winter.

Marcel began to see the change in Marie before she was even consciously aware of it. To prevent Marie from dabbling too much abroad (he believed and fully supported her desire to reenter the politics, but feared that she would become carried away, and therefore compromise Jacques’ education), the family had another child, a girl, whom they named Jasmine. The family did not feel such a strong bond from the birth of the second child. She seemed to foreign to them, as if the perfect mingling of Asian and Caucasian traits that happened in Jacques went awry, and instead created a being so unlike the two ethnicities. They could never seem to love Jasmine as much as Jacques. In fact, merely two months after her birth, Marcel returned back to the French political scene. His party mates just presumed that he had taken an extended vacation in Mexico, or the Bahamas, or some other exotic destination.

So, instead of making a grand return to the political scene, Marie was forced to take care of yet another child. Jacques was no help in taking care of the child; perhaps he also shared the same view that she was almost foreign to the family. Marie quickly became dissatisfied with her life. She felt as if chains were binding her to matrimonial duties. During these years of Jasmine’s early childhood, she started to think of a terrible, forbidden thing. This thing she thought of was such a terrible thing, that it made her reel back in disgust every time she thought of it. Yet this thing was also so alluring, that like a sinner who commits the same sin over and over again, in ever increasing intensity, simply because of the forbidden enjoyment her derives from the sin, Marie kept thinking of said thing more and more. Eventually, during Marcel’s visits back home, she began quarrelling with him over the thing. Marcel realized the change for the worse in Marie’s disposition, yet he knew that he had to keep the thing from happening, at least until Jacques could enter Stanford. Jasmine, he did not care about so much.

And such, the summer after Jacques found out he was not admitted to Stanford, and only to UCLA, the house that the family lived in started to divide in two. The thing was mentioned more and more often, and eventually, both parties agreed, and to the lovely surprise of Jacques, who had just driven for eleven hours to reach home from Los Angeles to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family, the first thing his parents made clear to him was that…

-

“Of course I’m all to blame. It’s my fault that I ended up not where I wanted to be. Of course, my parents say that UCLA is a great school also. Of course, I have this delusion that everything will be okay. But both my parents are politicians, and they have brought me up so that I also have the thought process of a politician. Politicians are masters at concealing what they truly feel. In telling me that it’s okay, both my parents are implying that I’m the chief reason that the event happened.”

Jacques noticed it was already nearly dark, and he had barely made it to Redding. He would still have to drive eight more hours to return back to Los Angeles, and he had to attend class tomorrow. His whole mind was still in convulsions, trying to piece his family’s history with his own failures and trying to create a whole justification as to why the event happened. But to no avail.

“They never could understand how much pressure was on me to succeed. I had to succeed. All of my extended family viewed me as the prodigy, the sure shot into Stanford. Yet in the last year, all the realities, all the scaffolding of this false glorification that was built around me, crashed upon me as if it were a glass house breaking. The cuts have healed up by now; they healed back in April, but the scars are still there and will always remind me of my failures.”

Jacques had, in the last two, crucial years of high school, had developed a pseudo-addiction to marijuana. He was nonchalantly introduced to it by a friend in high school, back when they were spending spring break in California. Since this innocent introduction, he had developed cravings for the substance, yet he always had enough composure to avoid intoxicating himself in the presence of his parents, or his sister. He always kept some in the car, in the sunglass pouch. He never wore sunglasses anyways, so he felt that the space would be at least put to some use this way.

He smoked whenever the pressures his father and his mother placed on him were surmounting. It had varied effects on him. Sometimes it would make him happy, so happy, as if he were on a cloud. Sometimes it would just throw him into a pensive depression in which, strangely, he could concentrate on his academics better, but also could not bear the presence of others.

Jacques, again, in his current agitated state of mind over the event, touched upon the subject of suicide. He wondered what suicide would feel like. It would be quick and painless, but he was scared to death of the preparations, what his mind would be going through during the actual thing, and in the seconds leading up to it, those seconds when a man has made up his mind, but yet has failed to put any part of the plan into action. To him, suicide seemed like an attractive way to rid him of all his troubles. Perhaps he would float on a cloud into the afterlife.

But to counteract these malicious thoughts, Jacques then wondered at what the aftereffects of the suicide would be. He feared for his father, having already cast off his love of twenty-plus years. He might be driven into suicide. His mother might become unapproachable, fueled by an eternal hate over what will have transpired. And his sister, the greatest tragedy of them all, would be forced to live under her hateful presence. Jacques never really made it known to his parents, but during these past few years of intensifying quarrelling, he found his sister his greatest joy in life, the one respite from life he could always look towards. Seeing his sister again was one of his primary reasons in taking the drive back to Eugene in one day, where should reasonably be done in two.

“Perhaps I shall just try it, just try it to see what it’s like. Just a little try. Then I’ll never do it again.”

Jacques’ hand reached for the sunglasses compartment…

- 

The road began to blur. The white reflective strips in the middle of the lane, and the yellow reflective strips at either ends of the highway began to mingle with the red taillights of the truck in front of him, forming combinations of purple, orange, and green. He, all of a sudden, under the strain from having driving for the whole day, and having this terrible event on his mind, felt incomprehensibly tired. He took his foot off the gas pedal and his head dropped on the steering wheel.

- 

“Oh my gosh you’re still conscious!”

When Jacques awoke he was staring into the brown eyes of a woman. She had long dark brown hair, and was of quite a tan complexion. He guessed that she was Hispanic.

“You’re lucky that your foot wasn’t on the gas when you dozed off. What were you thinking?”

“Huh?”

“You almost caused a crash between two trucks when you lost consciousness. You were in the left lane, and a truck was right behind you, trying to overtake the truck on the right, when I saw that you suddenly began to decelerate. I had to pass the truck in the shoulder, and knock you over into the grassy median. I think I dented your car a little, but it should still work.”

“Oh.”

“And why were you smoking weed? My gosh, your eyes are so red. Why would you do that to yourself. Do you have a death wish?”

“Mmm… I just wanted to try it.”

“Try what? Smoking or suicide?”

“Maybe a bit of both…? Not sure…”

“First of all, smoking is a sure addiction thing. ‘Trying’ it means that you are consigning yourself to become addicted to it. Second of all, you can’t ‘try’ suicide. You either fail and are scarred for life, or as is the case with most men, you die.”

“How do you know so much?”

“I used to be a CHP officer.” (California Highway Patrol) “You’d be surprised. The kind of thing you do happens quite often. ‘Cept people don’t lose consciousness like you did.”

“Listen, you don’t understand what I’m going through, still. My family and everything just kind of br-”

“I see. Same thing with me. And you wanna know the reason why I quit the CHP? It was the night that that happened to me and my family, and I had to work. My guard down, during a routine pull-over of a speeder, a man jumped out of the car, and hugged me, and began to kiss me. In my state of mind, I just wanted to be as terrible as possible, and I was tired of thinking. I just wanted to think of the present, and the present only, so I let him have me. Kind of like a bribe, if you wish to think of it that way.”

“Well that’s terrible. But I’m glad that somebody knows. My family is so in-”

“Indifferent? I know.”

“So what do I do from now?”

“Listen, your radio is still playing. I turned it on while waiting for you to regain consciousness. Why don’t you do what that song is saying?”

Cause I’m free as a bird now,
And this bird you’ll never change.
And this bird you cannot change.

“Think of it as an opportunity to now do whatever you please in life.” The woman went back into her pickup truck and drove away. Even before the lyrics of the song ended, all Jacques could see was her truck’s taillights in the distance, as small as the stars in the cloudless sky.

- 

By the time Jacques entered the Sepulveda pass, it was almost sunrise, and the morning rush hour had already begun. As he waited in the traffic jam, he felt quite a new man, not tired at all despite having essentially not slept last night. He resolved to study finance, and perhaps go to law school someday.

Reflections Under a Silent Selene

Last night I was more depressed than I had been in many months. The last time I remember being so depressed was March 30th (of this year).

I went to a formal dance thinking that my ideal would uphold. Instead, it was crushed. I went after the dance to find inspiration in other forms (so that I could finish my story), I got mocked and turned back.

This is the product of a night, and the depressing day after.

Enjoy.

------------------------------------------

This is a story set against the beautiful backdrop of a place which I have only recently started to appreciate…

---

“The whole concept of love is flawed.”

“What did you say?”

“Look, you’re happy now, but love is the most ephemeral and fleeting of all the emotions. What happiness you feel now will be, soon, nothing more than a distant memory. Perhaps it might haunt you, the thought that such happiness only exists in the past. However, I can tell that I am boring you two. So go, and enjoy the rest of your night.”

The man in the blue bolwer hat walked away from the couple, who had evidently dismissed everything he had told them as complete nonsense, and so in his absence, rose from the table around which they had been sitting, walked, hand in hand, back to the putrid maelstrom that was the dance floor.

The man in the blue bowler hat sat, alone, at a table, which was fairly sequestered from where everyone else was. “Why did I even decide to go to this dance,” he thought. “Why did the organizers, whoever it was that organized this dance, have such an odd idea for a theme? Why do I feel so out of place here?”

True enough, it appeared that every other man at the dance was either wearing a red or green bowler hat. What was more shocking to the man was that at some point during the dance, the men would hand an apple, whose color matched the color of the bowler hat the person was wearing, to his partner. It all seemed at once a grotesque yet familiar ritual to the man. “Of course I would wear a hat that is incompatible with this ritual!” he exclaimed. “What choice did I have; it was the only bowler hat I had. Why does fate always seem to be against me? Always!”

“I’m sorry, what did you say is always against you?” said a man wearing a red bowler hat with a thin green trim along the brim.

“Fate. And why should you care? Don’t you have a partner already? Where did you suddenly appear from anyways?”

“I have been sitting at the table across from you. I guess you can’t really have seen me because the lighting is so abysmal in this place. On second thought, I’m sure you must have seen me stride over to your table. Do you normally wear glasses?”

“Alas, I do, for without them I would be near-blind at night. I lost them though on the way to this dance…”

“Ah, a true misfortune indeed! To answer your other question, no, I haven’t found a partner yet. Whenever I offer a red apple to a girl, she replies, ‘I like your green trim. It’s so distinctive. It’s a terrible shame that you don’t have a green apple, though,’ and then walks away. When I try to offer a girl a green apple, she laughs a little and says, ‘You really should have offered a red apple. I barely see any green on your hat!” and them proceeds to walk away.”

“So, we are both alone, and we can be partners in our common state of solitude.”

“I know, but isn’t loneliness such a terrible emotion? It’s always paired together with hopelessness.”

“Not necessarily. It’s true I feel very lonely, being the only person wearing a blue bowler hat at this event. But hopelessness, depression, I do not feel at all. In fact, I feel perfectly content and at peace. I hate dancing so but I happen to enjoy the concept of a themed dance. To me, sitting here and watching others is just as fulfilling as dancing.”

“That’s a very interesting viewpoint, but I’ll tell you, have you ever had your heart broken, you know, thrown on the ground, and forced to watch it shatter into tens and thousands of shards?”

“No. I haven’t taken too many chances in my life with respect to that topic. At this stage anyways, love is nothing but a dead end leading to a cliff. Why should I bother?”

“Ah, you ask that, but look at all these couples here on the dance floor! They seem all perfectly content to give their heart to their partners, even if it is for only one night.”

“See, though. If for some of these unlucky souls, it ends after this very dance, you know, ‘How can one love again/ After a love so cruel,’ or something like that.”

“Well, to you, the idea of a one night stand sounds cruel, but maybe these people happen to fancy it.”

“We could never tell, unless, of course, we happened to be able to peer into their souls.”

“We can practically do that now. You do know that privacy means close to nothing these days, no more so than the fallen ideal of Communism, something born out of the purest intentions, but mutilated until it was shunned by the masses. That’s what privacy is now; people who seem too reclusive are shunned by society; they are always the ones suspicion is cast on.”

“I know what you mean.”

“I’m glad you agree! Social networks are really a wonderful thing, but I wonder if staying too interconnected with one and another may have negative repercussions.”

Suddenly the man in the blue bowler hat rose from his seat, almost in a state of euphoric craze, as if he had the compulsion to do something, and would have knocked down a man, cold, if he were in his way. The man with the red bowler hat with the green trim realized his sudden change in composure and said, “Ah, so it looks like you have to go somewhere. Well I will stay right here, if you need me. Adieu.”

The man in the blue bowler hat felt strange, as if he had to escape this scene at an instant. He shoved his way through the dance floor, which by now, and grown past the limits defined by the psychedelic tiles, and had clogged the room effectively enough, that one was forced to push through the throngs of sweating masses just to reach the exit.

The dancing crowd did not seem to care that the man in the blue bowler hat was at time, showing quite rudely his way through the crowd. At last, he could see the door to exit the venue. He rushed at the door with both hands outstretched, and the door did not budge one bit.

“Sir, you must pull the door open,” said the bartender, who was watching the man’s comical little debacle, as he had nothing better to do, since everyone was dancing, and evidently the crowd had not yet become thirsty.

Ignoring the bartender’s words, and rather relying on simple logic, pulled open the door, and muttered a few curse words at his own ineptitude, for having his grand exit turned into a comical vignette. Outside, he was at once struck with a sense of melancholic inner peace, as he could see the lake, which on it had tiny waves undulating back and forth, and one solitary boat off in the distance, its green light the only thing, apart from the glazed reflection of the moon, lighting the lake. “You know, they weren’t lying when they said that these lakes were like oceans,” the man said to himself.

“Leaving so soon?” said a voice.

The man in the blue bowler hat turned around to see a man who was wearing a green bowler hat with a red trim near the top.

“I could say the same about you,” replied the man.

“Me? Oh, I just went outside to take a quick drag. My partner’s waiting for me back inside. I’m almost done, however.”

“Wait. Could I talk with you a bit?”

“Sure, but keep it quick.”

“I’m leaving because I’ve seen enough. I’ve seen these couples dancing in ways which make me worry about the future of humanity. Is this all worth it, you know, this kind of dancing I’ve seen tonight. Even if it is just to fit in with the masses, is it worth it? Tonight I asked myself the question, ‘Is this what I want to become?’ Well, I’ve answered with a resolute no, and now I am leaving.”

The man wearing the green bowler hat put his hands on the man’s shoulders, and rotated him a quarter turn anticlockwise.

“Look,” said the man wearing the green bowler hat, “Look at where you are. You’re in one of the greatest cities in the world. Get some of that big city mentality, be a little bolder, take some chances, let loose, and above all, enjoy the night while it lasts.”

“While those are some very inspirational words, you know how hard it is to change the mind of a person who has steadfastly made up his mind. But, I must ask you, what is it like? You know, this ecstatic state of mind these people on the dance floor have.”

“It’s revolting at first, but as you get drawn into it more, you begin to crave it more and more, like as if it were the most addicting thing in this world, until reach a breaking point, after which all you feel is pure euphoria.”

“I see. Well that won’t make me change my opinion of this subject. I’m going away from this terrible place now. Enjoy your night.”

“Wait…!” cried the man wearing the green bowler hat. “Are you positively sure? You know… you could go back with, and I’d even help you find a partner!”

But the man in the blue bowler hat walked away. He knew that the man might have had honest intentions in his offer, but he also knew that once he reentered the venue, all his thoughts would vaporize into the smoky air. The man wearing the green bowler hat scoffed, and opened the door to the dance floor. For a few last seconds, the man in the blue bowler hat could hear the pounding music coming from the dance floor. He swore he could also make out groans coming from that terrible coagulation of flesh, but he just dismissed those sound as perturbations of the bass.

The man continued to walk along a path near the lake’s edge; nobody else was there, and the man continued to walk alongside the yellow haze of the half-lit lampposts that were scattered on the side of the path. It was a nice night: although it was a little chilly for this time of year, there was a fresh breeze coming off of the lake, and the sky had only a few patches of cloud in it, grey streaks spread out along a sky which had a slight orange tint from the lights of the city.

The man reached a beach, and he took off his shoes and socks, laid them neatly along the path on which he had been walking, and strode over to the water’s edge. He was about to step further in when he heard a voice.

“Wait!” it yelled.

The man turned around, and to his surprise saw the man wearing a green bowler had with a red trim running towards him.

“You were right!” he cried. “I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Take me with you! I want to go with you; anywhere is better than the dance floor after what I had just seen take place!”

The man put his hands on the shoulders of the man wearing the green bowler hat with red trim, turned him around a half-turn, or slightly more, anticlockwise so that he was facing the downtown skyline and said, “Look. You belong here. This is your city. I don’t, which is why I must leave.”

“All alone? Don’t you want support, a partner?”

“I began my journey tonight alone, and now I will end it, alone.”

The man in the blue bowler hat walked into the lake. After twenty seconds or so, the only thing that was visible of him was the very tip of that blue bowler hat, juxtaposed against the reflected of the moon, which seemed to hang like a silent selene in the sky.

They say the water of the lake has been a more pure, azure shade of blue ever since that day.