Entry 85

What's wrong?

The thing about spending time with virtual strangers is that it’s easy for them to surprise you. It’s harder to be surprised by the people you see all the time; it’s also harder to be unsurprised by an impression one may have had; it’s harder to spend an entire afternoon with someone you’ve never met without feeling an impatience to leave, but when you’re uncovering certain kinds of thoughts and ideas it’s easy to stay. I’ve been spending a lot of time with virtual strangers this week - by accident and by intention - and each time I was surprised and unsurprised in a unique kind of synchronistic blend. “I could tell you weren’t trying to get something from me,” one of them said. I returned the compliment. And then we spent several hours on a shaded outdoor bench. “In love, soulmates will only heal each other,” we agreed. Acting classes can teach you all kinds of things.

Now I’m at the bar reading alone, and being ignored. It’s early. I’m busy anyway, writing “what’s wrong?” on my to-do list, and picking my bookmark up from off the floor, and polishing my sunglasses, and rearranging my barstool so I can hook my heel on the side on which there is a rung. By the time I’m greeted I’m surprised to discover the bartender is not a stranger, but someone I’d made an acquaintanceship with before she’d moved away to the midwest. “My husband couldn’t do winter,” she tells me. I say “I’m glad” and notice that her teeth resemble the teeth of the person with whom I am in love, a fact I hadn’t noticed before she left LA since that was quite a while ago now, and I wonder if that contributed at all to the reason behind my making an acquaintanceship with her in the first place, or if I am now just projecting my love life onto this poor girl I only kind of know. She asks me about the book I’m reading. “I like your teeth,” I almost say, but stop myself. I recall, mentally, running into her together with her husband, whom I saw from a distance but never met, on their anniversary, at the Chateau Marmont that night last year that Kanye kept staring and we spent $200 on wine.

Back inside my book I think about the time a friend of mine took a photo of a man she had decided was performatively reading in public one night at the wine bar, but “I think he might just be reading,” I said or thought. I’m just reading, but the book reads as lonelieness, and so I’m thinking too about the fact that I’m happy to be blessed with muses and inspiration, in the form of strangers and also friends.

I look at my to-do list. “What’s wrong?” it asks me. Well for one thing, the jasmine is beginning to die, and I would rather it didn’t. For another, I haven’t been to a funeral in many years; this month I’ll be in attendance at at least two. The thing about funerals is that they are usually a spur-of-the-moment kind of affair. Not always. This month last year was the worst of my entire life, so what’s wrong are certain kinds of memories, but what’s right is that’s all they are. I’m thinking about how letting go of the past means also, a willingness to move forward rather than remain in a state of suspension, and I’m mustering whatever energy and bravery I might have on reserve to do so. Waiting for miracles will only get you so far, is the conclusion I have come to.

At home I water the jasmine; I fold my laundry, I open all the windows, I lie down on the floor, on the green rug, and then I check “what’s wrong” off my to-do list.