A Fool

It tended to be cold out most of the days, like the breeze one feels from opening a freezer--that sudden gust of condensing vapor: the instant, brief hint of fog.

frigid aire


No one was home, and there wasn't muchpasteto eat. He toasted some wheat bread and warmed some coffee. He sat on the warmly lit kitchen table. Dimming the light, he took a minute to look down at supper for that evening. Clasping his hands together over the dish of warm bread, he prayed, even though he wasn't very religious. He prayed to nothing, for nothing, grateful for nothing, for the nada in and of everything. He supposed it funny to be hunched over those crumbs, but it just felt right. He lit a candle and dimmed the light some more. 

Sometimes right lighting can make all the difference. 

He repeated many thanks, but most of them were directionless.

A loud knocking woke him from concentration. Tok, tok, tok! he went over to open the door. It was an old friend. 

“yo-yo, what’s up?”

“Hey!...Come in"

“Nada nada limonada..just trying to eat. Want some coffee or something?”

“Come in, close the door”
They both ate toast and drank coffee.

They talked a little about a recent LACMA exhibit: the Olmec heads—a bunch of concrete heads on display all over the museum. He recalled it being a nasty thing. He talked about how they must have been an innovative people to be able to fashion all that rock into shape, but his friend thought it a shame that the history testified to a dark past. His friend said heads are severed through policy nowadays. He stopped paying attention and wandered off in thought when his friend got into nostalgic and political words. He didn’t want to hear any of it; It was tinkling brass and phraseology to him--a speechifier and too much pomp.

“Listen, I’m going out”
“Where to?”
“I’m going to meet Hope by Dockweiler”
“oh...bad timing eh? ok, well, I came over to see what you were up to. Hey, what are they doing to the streets over there?”

Outside, the jackhammer played a symphony to a tow truck that kept rhythm.

“I don’t know...repairs”
“Well, if ain’t broke don't fix it, I always say” His friend took paranoia seriously.

“wise words there”
“You bet! next thing you know taxes will be going up! well, that being said, take care! See you later”

“...take care. goodbye”
And like that his friend, as suddenly as he appeared, quickly disappeared. 



He called twice and there was no answer. Maybe she got caught up in some sort of business, he thought. It’s always some sort of entanglement. Last time she told him she was held up by a conversation. There’s something dreadful about carrying on a conversation whilst another needs to go. Seems there is rarely any time to “stop and chat,” and sometimes many see it better to carry conversations over into some sort of a digital interface. There is something weird about the human condition when devices used to communicate isolate in some fashion—fragments, a message here, an e-mail, a picture, a disembodied voice (voicemail) there. nowhere and virtually everywhere He sent a text message: “headed out, take warm clothes, see you there,” and grabbed his jacket and car keys.

He started daydreaming about something; he didn’t even recall what though. He’d lost his wallet the prior night and was calling the bank to cancel the credit card. A recording that notified him about all the tellers being busy would occasionally interrupt the muzack. It was nice, at least, to hear that voice. It was human, even though it was recorded; there was some history there, in the tone that said, "thank you for calling." He hung up and decided to cancel online upon return; he was heading out. Driving down the 105, passing LAX, the metal machines took off and dragged clouds behind them over the blue canvas.  The days were filled with this type of useless daydreaming. The fog thickened as he neared closer to the Pacific down Imperial toward Vista Del Mar. 

He arrived a little early, or just on time, depending on purpose, which is never quite clear yet opaque as air. He parked on Vista; it was happy hour. He entered a pub and, thus, shifted the atmosphere. 

“Young mm-man,” said an older gentleman.
“Don’t listen to, -sten to him, he’s drunk” said another over his shoulder.

The young man laughed, a bit drunk, not really to humor them; his drunkenness had reached a level of looseness whereby one could forget about themselves. On the brim of Dionysian forgetfulness. 

His (e)very cell(s) was doused in alcohol. 

He checked his cellphone: nothing. There actually was a sense of relief since his clouded, intoxicated thoughts would be furthered obscured by the weak signal on his cell. 

“LL--Listen to what, to what...I am telling you! you see..see that woman over there”
“yeah, she's beautiful”
“right you are, there...lover boy! gg-go over, and ask her, if she’d like to have sex. What’s the worst that can happen? She slaps you or she says yes”

He was starting to sober up, or he needed another drink.

“1 in 99 that it might work; I even doubt that...that figure, maybe it's more like 0 in 100”
"0 in 100! see, that's what's wrong with you young man, take a risk! 1 in 99? now that zounds likepretty good, purrety good, odds, wouldn’t you say? Feeling lucky?”

“I’m not a gambling man”
“Well then you ain’t living! It feels good to live!”
“excuse me, I’ve got to take this call”
"bah!"

He stepped aside. 

“Buuuueno?”
“Hey! How are you?”
“hey-ello! as good as the next man suppose”
“you ok? hey listen, I won’t be able to make it, I’ve got to finish up some work and I'm feeling soooo so tired. I’m so sorry”
“oh? um-hm..well,"

He sighed

"No worries, no big deal. Something came up..."

He cleared his throat.

"...then something came up...I’ll see you tomorrow?” he inquired.

“definitely”

“Guess I’ll head home”
“Again, I’m sorry about this!"

“Don’t worry, we’ve nothing but time on our side. We’ll meet some other time”
“Ok, love you, goodbye”
“Take care”

Inside the bar an argument broke out and the older man was nowhere to be found. He ordered a shot of tequila, drank it without company, and headed toward the shore.

He had always enjoyed the ocean. He loved feeling the sand grains on his face and the smell of a salty breeze that is so strong one can taste it. One can get a clump of wet sand and hurl it into the ocean and imagine it breaking down into several pieces. The oil-rigs in the distance seem to float out there in space because at night the horizon blurs in with the dark, and if you squint, the faint light can imitate a star. The occasional bon-fire’s attract occasional kumbaya folk and spiritual testimonies. He didn't like it; the zeal can make you lose focus of the sand, the moonlight shimmer bouncing of the water, the breeze, and the gentle crashing of waves sending salty mist into the air.

He had all sorts of questions in his my mind. At work, the teens were reading Siddhartha, and he thought about how much in that novel he didn't understand. Out of suffering came love for the Buddah. For him, pain and suffering: it was life. But connection through such baseless feelings while some love and others despise with words like love and hate meant nothing against the names of oceans, neighborhoods, galaxies, hunger, and people.

His liver was hurting; he often, absentmindedly, mixed  painkillers and alcohol against reason, and he was paying the price for it out there. He wasn’t waiting for an answer, really. He didn’t wait to hear anything. The shore’s salty breeze fizzed in the air like fizz.

The horizon melded with the ocean in a vast canvas of darkness, and the oil-rigs in the distance flickered like a stars. All of the medicine in the world could not fix the dis-ease he felt that night; his eyes burned against the breeze.

He took off his clothes and walked into the Pacific, deciding on a swim. The shore waves hypnotized his vision with an ebb and flow of stillness. The water, he figured, was sure to set him straight. The ocean hissed ~shhhh~ and smoothed the sands; no other sound could be heard but that of a cricket, chirping somewhere in the twilight.