A place of visions...
I spent an hour at the B&N Café yesterday with Sarah Byrne, whom I had not seen since March 15, the day after I learned I would be going to graduate school.
I met Sarah when the Americana opened…at the time she was one of our head cashiers. She still is behind the counter, but took an hour reduction to devote herself to her true love, acting. And she'll be a great actress if she lands the breaks…she radiates with sincerity, and she's gorgeous, with blonde hair and blue eyes and a body which looks great in any clothes you drape her in, especially black. (btw, Sarah is quite devoted to her boyfriend Richard…a heck of a guy from the times I've met him…and my judgment of her is mainly one of comparison to a lifetime of movie-watching, and a little bit of being an impressed friend) We ended up becoming friends through a series of hanging-out at various homes and bars…she coaxed me into my first ever all-nighter last July and witnessed my powerhouse vocal rendition of "MacArthur Park."
But more importantly, through my period of transition, from solitary, unemployed, and struggling to write, to a future doctoral candidate with a great job and plenty of friends, she became one of the key people who guided me.
Sarah grew up in a tight family and served in the armed forces before coming to Los Angeles, so she has life experience up the wazoo and, more importantly, plenty of shit together. Somehow, she looked past our differences, saw our similarities, and made herself open and available whenever I wanted to talk about my foibles, my disasters, my problems with decision-making, my problems with the opposite sex, my problems with just figuring out what to do next. Most of all, she's the sort of person who does NOT let you get down on yourself or feel discouraged and sad...I've lost count of how man times she's told me not to look negatively at my life and give myself credit. Sometimes I think she's too complimentary…but she'd argue with me until sunrise about that so I won't mention it in greater detail. Along with Kat and Betsy, Sarah brightened every day I got to see her.
A change in our work patterns made me not able to see her as much…but when we caught up yesterday in between my shift and hers, it was as if no time had passed.
And for some strange reason, as we talked and laughed and mused on furniture and such (seriously), high school popped into my mind. Back then, there were people and experiences I thought would always be paramount in my existence and memory. Not so much. Except for Lisa and Carlee and Gismo and a few others, there's hardly anyone I still am in regular contact with. But that does not diminish the fact that what I lived through in Boardman was essential to growing into the person I am today. I truly believe people come into your life at times when you need them the most, and no matter what happens to your relationship in the future, if they're there when it is most crucial for them to be there…that's what matters and that's what gives you love and strength and wisdom.
Sarah thinks I give her too much credit when I tell her she did that for me…but it's the truth. And we parted with the best hug I've gotten from anyone in a long time.
Back at Big Pink, after cooking up some turkey Rueben quesadillas and washing the dishes, I joined Tyler, the only other conscious occupant of the house, in the living room. I had a few ginger ales, he smoked various things, and words flowed easily.
Tyler has a beautiful soul which comes out in his songwriting (he played me a new one last night, another work in progress with one of his spanglingly repetitive riffs) easier than it usually does in conversation. I can respect that, being similarly quiet at times. Last night something made us both want to talk…maybe the general air that I've got less than a month, they have less than fifty days, and our home will be no more. He's going to London to sing on the streets and develop his music until he HAS to leave the country…it's the sort of risk very hard for me to take. My risks involve spending two months writing lousy novels (didn't pay off) or going for graduate school and increased debt (this one worked).
One part of life we all took a risk with this year was the opposite sex. My own journey ended in rejection and plenty of education. Tyler got close to several women, but none of them exactly fit the bill, and what I've learned about his and some of the other affairs among our roomies has only come in fits and starts. It's because I don't want to know anything about anyone which they don't feel comfortable telling me…I would rather leave well enough alone and only offer comfort when comfort is asked or obviously needed. But it is strange sometimes to live in such close quarters with people and be a perfect stranger to major sides of their lives.
Los Angeles wore down on all of us. Tyler thinks about Los Angeles a lot, and would tell you it's not even really a city, but a mass of people and buildings which built itself up between a mountain range and an ocean somehow and keeps sprawling. It's not urban or rural, not alienating (to a degree) but definitely not home. And while I shall leave with some beautiful memories—sweating in Mike's room in February as I wrote the final drafts of An Elegy for Amelia Johnson, driving onto the Sony lot for the first time before going on Jeopardy, banging on a tambourine and singing "Sara" before about twenty-five people in our living room at three o'clock in the morning, fueled by beer and soda and sugar and marijuana cake—I won't miss the expenses and the driving and the loneliness.
I introduced Tyler to Henry Miller after chiding him that anyone who's been to his library that much should read one of his books—and now he's been swept up. There's a passage in Tropic of Cancer he once showed me which really affected him. Miller writes of a moment of decision, that existence will continue on in a state of moral neutrality, that hoping for anything and trusting to the better nature of man will result only in disillusion and heartbreak, and that the only way to be alive when your spirit and morals are dead is to live to the fullest, to be a hyena consuming flesh as much as possible. I can't agree with a man who says that he found God and God was insufficient, but there is a kernel of truth there. Tyler is certainly not amoral, but he believes in letting the spirit come over you in special ways (like meditation at Big Sur) and following your desires no matter where they lead you.
None of the great plans we had in Boston have come to fruition…all of them have changed. We are still evolving. Someday, maybe after 33, the age when geniuses die (for none of us yet qualifies to be a genius) we may reunite and see how far we've come and find that we have become rocks, not the brutal and thoughtless but the solid, the sure of ourselves, the supporters of people, friends, loved ones, maybe even families…but not yet. Not when we're still figuring things out.
But we have each other and our shared loves of art and life and pad thai, and that is more than sufficient for right now.
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