Groan. I shut my eyes tight and open them again, hoping to see something different in front of me. Open them to a new life, new world, new me. But when I do open them, everything is exactly how I left it 10 seconds ago. I strain for more light, leaning closer to the window to catch more bounce from the orange street lamp. It doesn't work and I give up, closing my favorite surprise of the day - my first copy of The Food Network Magazine. I'm halfway through but the rest will have to wait for later. Without looking I feel around for the remote control but my fingers find nothing. It's disappeared into the nest I have created on the couch. The nest I have been sitting in since 11am. I stretch my legs to the far end of the couch and close my eyes again, only to open them to the same disappointment. This is too much. I somehow manage to push myself out of my nest and struggle to flap out the door.
I walk around the village trying to clear my head. As I stroll through the streets in the warm air, people are bustling. Some restaurants are packed with people, others completely empty. I pass store after store after store, watching the lonely waitstaff and chefs hanging around an empty restaurant, just waiting for closing time. "In this economy...." 9:30 on a Monday night is not exactly a hopping time for many of these restaurants, but still its sad. These look like nice places, the decor is inviting and the places immacutely set for ghost customers. How long will they make it? Some stores, Australia on St. Marks, haven't been able to push through. A new cafe where an old one used to be is brightly lit but empty, a lonely dog sitting in the window and a solitary employee playing longingly with a glass of water. No customers, no employees. I'm reminded of the main thing I was trying to escape by walking. My unemployment. I am so unemployed its unbelievable. I spent all day looking today, but nothing is easy. It feels like summer vacation, I think the fact that school will not be waiting for me in a month hasn't quite hit yet. Friends have gone home for the summer, but they'll be back and we'll all be together in class again, rolling on the floor and complaining about processfolios or student teaching... nope. I don't know what I want to do. I enjoy being around people, and doing school. Those are things I'm good at. I like interior decorating, cooking, walking, meeting new people... what is that for a career? I feel hopeless and...
My mind flashes back through high school, college and up to now. I expected so much from myself, and I think others did too. Expected to "go far." And I did - New York, as far away from California as you can get still in the USA. And I think I did do some great things. High school was kick ass and so was college. I'm good at doing things well, on a prescribed path. But breaking away from that path? I'm like Kafka Tamura, lost in the woods. Only I'm not able to ditch the backpack and the spray paint and follow two ghost soldiers into the town that time forgot. Where is my sense of urgency and necessity?
Walking through the village to clear my head just reminds me of all the other times in my life I've needed to walk around in solitude trying to figure things out. I'm reminded of running away from my first love, running away from my second love, and my third, summer nights spent driving around, racing to get home before curfew, the excitement of getting ready and going out in foreign cities, dancing till dawn, pool parties and watching the ocean at night... Hoping someone would notice I was alone. Walking around waiting for something. Waiting for someone. Walking around waiting for myself to become something, for cats to talk and fish to fall from the sky. For every flower I picked, for every pair of eyes I've looked into at dusk, for every wish, for every missing you. Waiting. Just last summer, everything was so alive. I found overwhelming delight in each summer night, each glowing leaf and noisy cafe. Excited for what was coming. Now, everything is over and I don't know how to move forward. Day by day I hope, until something exciting comes along. Until then, waiting for the buzzer to honk or the phone to beep. Apathetically.
If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung,
Would you hear my voice come through the music
Would you hold it near as it were you own?
Its a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken,
Perhaps they're better left unsung,
I don't know. Don't really care
Let there be songs to fill the air.
There is a road, no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go, no one may follow,
That path is for your steps alone.
Ripple in still water
When there is no pebble tossed
Nor wind to blow.
But if you fall you fall alone,
If you should stand then whos to guide you?
If I knew the way I would take you home.
PS - don't try to make quesadillas with "Pam cooking spray - for baking."
