I got a paranoid fear last night while talking with my friends. We were discussing the recent loss of a friend to the streets and whether or not he’ll return. I told them about how my dad, who was homeless at times, told me about living on the inside and living on the outside and how he wanted to live on the outside, “the inside, no way…I can’t live on the inside. I don’t want to!” I explained to my friends that the pull to live on the outside after so many years is so compelling that my dad did it even though it separated him from the only person who he loved and who loved him – his daughter.
My friend, E. sighed heavily and said, “I think it’s time for some comedy.” And he put on a trippy adult animation. I went outside to where guy was smoking and told him my feelings. I told him that I had “turned Christopher Walken in Annie Hall on them (our friends).” He said I should tell E. that, that that is one of his favorite movie scenes.
“Turning Christopher Walken in Annie Hall” is when I say too much, when suddenly something very sad and horrible to imagine comes out of my mouth, but I don’t feel bad when I say it. I say it matter-of-fact, but it takes other people down a bad road, a sad road and suddenly and they don’t like it. This is what Christopher Walken’s character does to great effect when speaking with Woody Allen’s character in Annie Hall.
“Sometimes…when I’m…driving…late at night, I imagine…smashing into….the oncoming headlights…” It freaks Woody out, just as I feel I freak others out with unintentional storytelling from the horrors of my life. I guess because I only recently realized that I have had horrors in my life. Bad things have happened that I thought were normal human happenings until therapy. Then I see the cringe on my audience’s face and I realize, yes, I just did another Walken.
I woke up this morning with a start. Guy had just gone to the bathroom and come back into bed, then I woke, and jumped. I was having a horrible dream. I don’t remember at which point I was awakened. I dream pretty weird and horrible stuff every night, but I don’t usually recall anything, much less the short novel I remembered this morning. I forced myself out of bed after telling guy about it. I have to keep my eyes closed when I tell a story like this, a dream, or it will fade faster. I realized when I was done that I needed to write this one down. This one was important. It’s about loss of family to horrible human monsters.
My friend D. is inside doing her morning yoga. She seems to made of a nice, solid, stretchy rubber band. Her movements are so smooth and specific, there can be no other explanation.
Upstate New York, Ithaca in particular reminds me of the South. I am often reminded of the South on the East Coast. They share the similar humidity (there is less in Ithaca), similar overgrown, beautiful, shade-making trees on my friends’ street just like Grandmama and Grandaddy’s in Louisiana…and there is a stillness in the air that I suppose is simply the result of not living at least within a half hour of the ocean, the way I have most of my life. The air is still and soft. I can hear the birds this way. Time is slower. Sounds are tighter. They are kept together. I feel safe. I feel happy. I wonder if all people should just stay in the place they were born, if memories of the beginning of life are good, then they should just stay there. If all childhood memories that are good are from that place, then the answer seems very obvious. Stay there. I sit in the stillness of the air of the Yanks – the very enemy of the Southerners – little do they know they share the same air…and I feel complete, happy, at peace, lacking in struggle, with memories so deep I can cry in seconds at the thought…I sit and I feel almost at home. Almost in Louisiana. And I wonder if that’s where I should be.
It’s where I came from. It’s where my ancestors from Ireland, Scotland and England emigrated to. No one deviated until my mom and me. Everyone in our family history came over from the Isles and moved to Louisiana, and stayed there.
Has travel, flying, etc. made it too easy for us to leave our homeland, maybe something we were never meant to do. Or at least, should return to? I think I’m deciding that I want to return there more often anyway, if not permanently someday.
And I wonder why I feel so isolated, lost and different from my adopted California family and the deepest sadness it brings me.
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