Entry 77

Would you rather ?

Rain is falling through my sunroof. Not much of it, maybe five or six drops, but when LA gets grey like this, living feels more alive, and you start to get a sense that the pale petals all over the sidewalk are pieces of your past and the new greenery on the trees are those of your future now taking shape. I drove in a daze from the airport to the reservoir, the pretty one, where I walked mechanically, watched birds soar over the grey water; noticed golden buds on a dark suede-like green backdrop; felt the air press itself into me as one collective thing; felt my legs move until I’d completed the full loop back to where I’d left my car. I listened to the same song 100 times in a row. At home, I didn’t clean my house, I didn’t change my sheets, I don’t plan to, I don’t want to. I closed my eyes and could smell lilacs, could see the kind of hazel that’s mostly green and glassy and gets that way because of happiness or some other feeling, like love. I closed my eyes and wished for it to be six days earlier. I thought about the idea of rain coming down through an open rooftop window that’s made specifically for sunshine, and about how cities always sound different in coolness and gloom. LA today, to my ears, is a bit more like Paris. LA today sounds a little more like home in the spring. I feel less like a heatwave myself, because I’m kind of hungover.

Things are speeding up. The cards on my back patio table said they would, and mine told me everything would be fine, don’t you know that already, and not to waste my creativity on worry, so now I’m not. “Would you rather,” Sam said. “Live right next to the perfect river? Or the seaside.” Depends on the river. Depends on the seaside. Would you rather wild mountains or green rolling hills? Would you rather everything be totally new? Here I am, falling in love with the same old places, and sleeping with an intense kind of depth in which I dream with constant movement. In these dreams, everything always looks so very green. In reality, my future is taking a visible shape. Things are coming into focus. “Would you rather,” he asked. “Everything about your life be 40% better than right now, but you could get jack-in-the-boxed out of it at any random given moment?” Oh, I said, as I pictured being unwittingly sprung into the air, torn from the perfect kiss, or away from Los Angeles, away from this margarita, without any say in the matter. I think I’d rather not.

The fact that tomorrow is April has just occurred to me. This realization comes as basically, a complete shock. Things are speeding up. I have two unopened novels in front of me, waiting to be read. Everything about right now feels fated and progressive and poised to expand. A desire for expansion is my number one value, is what I think I said last night. Love is another. Fear, I’m noticing, is a part of life. Just like death is nothing but a part of life, a part of the way we live it. Fear can’t do anything all by itself.