***
roman à clef
roman film à clef
film à clef
***
Driving to Orlando is not a big deal any more, you just drive south for a while and then merge onto I-4. Easy breezy just like that. I don't really need GPS either at this point. Plus, I get to drive over St. Johns towards the end of the trip, which is like a bonus. It feels great every single time, almost liberating, like all the other driving-on-the-bridge experiences. Coming back from Orlando is even easier. It's basically the same route in the opposite direction, but somehow it feels like it actually takes less time. Maybe because I'm speeding. Maybe because of the relief of going back home, getting to sleep in my own bed. Probably both.
Anyways the trip is very doable, except this one thing that I'm still not completely comfortable with -- the "NEW TRAFFIC PATTERN AHEAD" sign. Shortly after the yellow sign reveals itself, the lane number changes and the highway starts to wind. I have one or two thousand feet between the sign and the actual transition but that's not enough for me to get used to narrower, winding, and hence more intimidating roads. Trying not to imagine me crashing into concrete traffic barriers I wonder instead: in order to not feel too foreign about this, how far in advance should I be warned? Or how much more do I need to repeat this trip?
***
***
I bursted into tears as I was climbing into his car, and of course he went instantly speechless after a short hello. What can he say, there there, I feel you, it's okay, everything will be alright? The window of his passenger seat was broken, so he taped it all over with ugly black duct tape, and I was staring at it hard trying not to cry but to no avail. We were soon back on the highway and I was still sobbing. He didn't have tissues in his car so I blew my nose on flimsy napkins printed with the Coca-Cola logo, typical Delta.
"I know, I know... Girls tend to cry when they see my face," he muttered, attempting to cheerfully joke by debasing himself, his signature move. "Don't worry, I'm not offended, won't take this personally."
I sort of cry-laughed with my nose still buried in napkins. Fast approaching ahead of us was my favorite bridge in town, a very white and beautifully gigantic structure, the biggest bridge in this city, hovering over an estuarine paradise. The sight suddenly reminded me of Irene Hixon Whitney bridge in Minneapolis, not because of their similarities in structures or functions (IHW is not white but blue and yellow, strictly pedestrian, and it's not over the water), but because of John Ashbery's poem from 1988 that was delicately printed on its lintels. The poem has lines like this:
"It is so much like a beach after all, where you stand
and think of going no further."
We were climbing up the bridge and soon my view was filled with sky, just sky, as if I was flying again. I just flew back. I didn't want to fly again, at least for a while. Instead I wanted to say, pronounce, enunciate, how surreal yet so real this is to me, that this happened, this really happened after all, I mean I knew this would happen but I didn't know that this would actually happen, but it did happen, de facto. I wanted to say something. I wanted to mold my feelings and thoughts and emotions into words and pour them out to whomever willing to listen, maybe to him who was driving right next to me, or just to anyone. Sadly and honestly, however, I could not articulate. Not in the way I wanted.
Everything was sharp yet all blurred.
***
I later realized that it was my first month in more than two years where I watched movies without telling him about it. I watched six movies, three from this year and the other three from past years. I also read three books, two from this year and one from the past century. I did other things too. Many things. Different things. Most of them were entertaining and although I felt like I was trying too much to fill the void with stuff, I could not complain much as I was fairly entertained.
"Whatever floats your boat," he said. "You've got to do it."
Hence I did.
***
"And it is good when you get to no further."
***
At one point I thought: maybe not many things have changed after all. What kind of difference -- significant, that is -- is there?
Look at Emmanuelle Riva from Amour. Despite her obviously fragile physicality on screen, she still has that crystalline voice as if she has not changed from her fifty-something-year-younger self from Hiroshima mon amour. Her core is still intact even after half a century. Although paralyzed, she sounds exactly the same as if she is young and passionate enough to fall in metaphorical love with a total stranger in post-war Japan. "It's beautiful," she exclaims with that immortal voice, before she gets completely paralyzed and immobile. "Life. So Long. Long life." How marvelous.
I recently skyped or met up with my high school/college friends and what intrigued me the most was this common thing they all told me: my intactness as a person. They didn't mean that they want to see me all shattered and destroyed, I know, but they were all genuinely surprised and proud to see how intact I remained ultimately. I had never put myself in such context so I was confused.
There was one person indeed who told me that it is critical to have a good, lengthy "grieving" period, and from her tone I could tell that she was thinking that I did not. I did, though. Of course I did. Who wouldn't. I am a normal human being too with all the normal feelings and emotions, if not more than average. I was bedridden for a good amount of time either trying my best to sleep or binge-watching useless shit on Netflix to stop myself from thinking and on many occasions I just sat in my driver's seat for a few minutes with the engine off, letting my mind drift as long as it needed to. Like he described for his case, I also had to "start from scratch."
I just did it silently. There were times I just talked incessantly to people, but on most parts, I did it quietly. Even introvertedly, if you can put it that way.
"Everything is processed inside you," he told me. "I'm only here for you to vent."
Precisely.
***
All I know now is that what will happen will happen and that I am no longer scared of things that I used to be scared of.
I have already repeated this enough in my brain to the point where I feel like I've lived this out for hundreds of times.
Then I finally reached the point of cruel clarity and realized that I've done everything I could do.
So I will just wait, relaxed, letting the current carry me.
It does not feel foreign any more, at least.
***
Two years ago, on the last day of calendar-summer, I watched Hong Sang-soo's movie The Day He Arrives북촌방향, because he told me that's the only movie of Hong that he had ever watched ("I loved it so much that I didn't want to watch anything else of his."), and headed to a bar with friends to celebrate the weekend night. Last year, on the last day of calendar-summer, I was making love to him in my favorite city in this country. In less than twelve hours, on the last day of this year's calendar-summer, I will be flying again for the first time in two months. Earlier today while I was waiting for a friend at a cafe I wanted to write something in my journal for the first time since then and when I opened the journal the familiar Coca-cola logo-stamped napkins (seemingly not used, no tear stain) fell off and landed on my lap. I don't know how they got in there but it brought me back all those memories of me on the plane jotting down indescribable feelings in indiscernible handwriting while wishing, truly wishing well-being for both parties.
On next year's last day of calendar-summer,
***
***
+ jamie xx - the rest is noise
