Endless Night

1

Order. Clarity. Did either of it matter? Did it exist? My soul was bending and stretching. I was becoming anew as the Rebirth of the world was happening. Using my mind to understand my mind—a paradox.

Spring slid in like a backdrop of a play; green sprung from the ground, the sky became less of a blur, darkened skin returned to the streets, glasses sweated. Being and clarity returned to me. It seeped under my brown skin in a way the blazing sun could not.

I glowed under the fresh awakened sun. Face and blood warm, feet thrusted into grains of sand, I was like a reptile; cold blooded and in need of the holy star to comfort me.

And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!

I didn't weep like Poe. My spirit was tied to the words of Camus. It was absurd, I thought, to linger in pity and sadness than to instead find comfort and happiness that one was able to feel. To not feel was a crime against humanity and the ultimate low; it was suicide.

The ocean lapped in the distance with a calmness so serene one could be fooled to go beyond and realize too late the trap. The madness was at the shore; vexed waves slapping the sand; the sand giving way and parting to no longer endure the pain and being rather responsible for allowing the pain to be inflicted on kin below it. Madness at the forefront was beauty and drew many in. The land and sun and beauty sunk the deeper and deeper one swam into madness.

Hills, mountains, and dizzy roads stretched one way, the body of water stretched the opposite.

It was my first spring in the L.A. area, my second week in California, but I felt a sense of belonging. Love and colors oozed from every which way; north, south, east, west. I was a stranger in a foreign land and could create myself as if I were a character. My true past could be but a dream, and the false past and events that led me West could be reality to the ears near.

When attempting to swirl flowers and honey into my past, I told a strange man the truth one cloudy night. His peculiar eyes drew me in. Were they blue, grey, or green? "The sadness is seasonal. I think it's the cold of the Midwest. And here there is no cold," I told him. I apologized after his strange reaction. The rising of his dark brows, a hand rubbing behind his ear, the dancing of his eyes. He made a counter apology and only shared his amusement that I told him his eyes were magical and begged me to share the truth.

"I've got bad eyes," he said with a small smile, a gap between his front teeth. "Whacked," he pointed to his right eye, "with a tennis ball by an eye doctor."

That night was spent walking and chatting with a stranger like in La Nouvelle Vague. His already wild sandy hair was made messier by the wind. He once permed it, but months later the untamable Jew 'fro returned and he couldn't be bothered to appease others.

A note slipped in my hand when reaching my friend's tiny little bohemian bungalow in Venice. Right along the canal where I took early morning walks with a book in hand, my feet bare and scratching over grass as I watched the sunrise. It was more of a home than I ever felt I had.

Honey and vanilla danced in the whistling wind. All the windows were up and natural light was the only light. Even after merely two weeks I knew that scent meant Julia had created a new candle. Her dark eyes bounced over me, slipped under my skin when an opening was found, and attempted to stretch into my very mind. She asked how could I have received a letter, I'd only been in California for half a month.

"What little lover are you hiding from me, Madame Faye?"

I slipped away to the back room, only a sheer crimson curtain as the door. Julia offered me her bedroom, even begged, but a refusal stood strong. My belongings were: a bag with clothes and few pictures and a backpack with books and worn journals. Many, many blankets created a pallet on the floor. At night when the moon was high and the heat grew too high I'd press a cheek to the linoleum floor.

The back room was used as an art room. A stack of Julia's paintings stood in the corner, all turned to the wall. Her heavy Goya influence frightened me at night when the branch of a tree often scraped the window and darkness grew. I blamed her love for Goya on the Spanish blood deep within her.

You say your father calls you "Wild Child." Come to the ocean with me and show me why. I need proof with my own eyes.

Say you saw. Say you breathed. Say you lived.
Yours Truly,
R.

A location was scribbled below in his tight, childlike writing.

I felt a stirring within me. Recognition. I told him my wish to receive and give letters, like those in the olden days. I longed to someday receive a love letter that could compete with Oscar Wilde's.

"Faye."

Julia stood behind the sheer curtain, a crimson shadow with the sun behind her. She was a believer and practitioner of privacy, and didn't ask again of the letter that came for me, only asked if I'd like to sit on the lawn and smoke grass with her as the sun showed early signs of setting.

Through the curtain I went; into a mystic world that was cinematic.

Trembling of the Wild Child.