bufo boreas

28 August 2003 - 05:55

<<--unravel * reintegrate-->>

Here are some stories from California:

In the beginning, we were always hanging on the next chunk of money wired to us. One night we had no cash for a hotel, so we spent the night in Redding on the street. We trekked across the Cypress St bridge and followed the Sacramento River, hoping to find a park. I was insane with joy at this time: I was with someone I love more than skyscrapers, we'd hitchhiked there a few days ago, the whole summer and infinite potential was ahead of us. There was a strange sequence of three office buildings along the river, and something about them reminded me of my world, and I stopped talking for an hour as I held onto this sense that everything around me had this complex emotional meaning from another time. They had glass facades and balconies and grand staircases.

Next we stumbled on an abandoned mini golf course with trees growing out of the turf. We drank a 40 there, giddy and giggling. We had trouble finding a place to sleep (too many large black bugs in the golf course), were growled at by some hound from hell in a park, chased by security guards at North Valley Bank. We ended up sleeping on some bags of mulch at a garden store.

The bus in Redding does not go to the airport, so in the morning we took the one that went closest and tried (unsuccessfully) to walk the rest of the way. In a sun-scorched residential area, we found a thousand baby bufo toads in the street (this was an earth-shaking omen for us, like God parting the Red Sea). We were blistered and hungry and exhausted but filled with the kind of awe that is making the sun rise outside my window right now.

*
When we were parting, he enumerated the ways he damaged my life, and I said, "I don't care; I don't care about any of that; I would go through every moment again and worse to be with you. Even in the moments I felt most defeated the past few months, I was immensely happy just to be with you. I said this the first time you disappeared, and I still mean it, my *whole life* will be better for the time I spent with you..."

Him, voice nearly breaking: "The *first* time I disappeared? As if I'm doing that now..."

And that embrace, and holding back tears, and the words whispered in my ear for the first time...

*
Three days before I left Redding, my fortune cookie said, "You are soon going to change your present line of work," and I laughed in total disbelief. I know better now. I know I could see him tomorrow and be with him forever, or never in my life see those liquid brown eyes again, and no one can predict it, not even God if he existed... And for some reason I don't miss him like I used to miss people; maybe I've found some kind of new strength inside me, or maybe love truly is the transformative force romantics would have us believe.

<<--unravel * reintegrate-->>