LATE NIGHTS LOST IN THOUGHT
I am in Bridgewater, New Jersey. It’s an hour passed 12am, and the sound from the moving cars and trucks still driving down the highway seesaw in and out of my eardrums; the subtle smell of wood saunters through the air - likely from the spot just beyond my laptop, where for 36 hours a heated pot sat, cooking vacuum-sealed pork at 140 degrees. To my left are clusters of clothes that aren’t mine, and just beyond the screen of my laptop is a half-finished Coca-Cola. One solitary green plant rests on the oak wood desk, its leaves rising over my computer, casting a faint shadow on the white blinds covering the window. They all serve as subtle reminders of this ever-moving story we call life, and its’ bookmarks.
I will likely never know the Alabama man who owns these grey-brown slippers with white fleece insides, and brought along this giant book titled “Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!” by George R. Raoble. This man from Alabama, who rented a room from my friend on Airbnb and had to leave on a family emergency, may just-as-well never know that a man named Ryan stared at his slippers and contemplated slipping his socked feet inside for a moment to test out their comfort. Yet, in this intricate overlap of stories, this moment exists. In his absence, I now fill this space. As he goes through this potentially crucial moment in his life, I too, face this odd road ahead.
Kansas is five days ago, which is an odd thing to write. The time between then and now feels like an eternity. These minutes and hours way heavily on me, as if I can feel their passing much more than I could before. Up until just a moment ago, I didn’t realize it had been less than a week. Perhaps this dilation of time is sewn into the heart with a moment held inside the loud boom of a ventricle, leaving space between the passing moments I grab on to. Perhaps, in the oft-blurred landscape of my life’s events, I can finally feel the space between the atoms, hoping that there’s a chance someone joins in - like a train slowing around a bend, just long enough for the adventurous wanderer to climb aboard. But with a heart in suspense, I wonder if she will.
The road to love is a tender, poetic, chaotic and ruthless path that we hope is worth it by the time we arrive. There will never be a part of me that believes that when incapsulated in those solitary moments we share with those special people we contemplate taking that path with, we are not tapping in to some secret to life. Every juncture punctuated with the palpable energy of two souls, sharing a promising convergence has had, within its’ grip, the uncanny ability to still time for me. When I finally met Tinderella the day before I departed from Kansas, time once again fell silent.
She walked towards me in a pink hoodie, as I adorned the white gazebo I had chosen to meet at with googly eyes. Beneath her shades, her beautiful brown eyes smiled; the pierced dimples of her cheeks rose as her mouth followed suit and she handed me my water. We walked the park a few times, some of it littered with her tale of discontent for a comedian she saw, and some with a horrendous retelling of my trip to Ireland, where I felt like I experienced magic in my adult life for the first time (a point I’m not sure was ever able to land). When she tired of the walk, and wished to sit, we chose a picnic table underneath an awning by a small playground where, more than a few times, a child screeched into the air. It was there that she took her sunglasses off, and I was finally able to bask in the warmth of her unhindered gaze. In those moments, as I sat in front of her and the words poured from our lips, I fell into a trance of calm where I could swear the cogs of the clock slowed, and the idiosyncratic motions of modern dating culture collapsed. Fighting against every impulse in me that wanted to hold her hand, slip over to the other side of the bench and cuddle her up to me, or find the silent moment to slip my lips onto hers was this greater desire to take the time to come to love her.
The fear of losing out in that moment vanished. And while, still, somewhere in me, I wished to be exploring her, paving the way forward through our love language of touch, the need for it to be that moment, vanished. I cared only about exploring her and the possibilities of us in extended moments brimming with beautiful probabilties. A quantum cloud of daydreams that we can marinate in time and swoon into actuality. It was a notion that I had been removed from when I departed from my adolescence, reprogrammed by the rapid movement of desire along paths seeking dopamine release, and the want to arrive at intimacy without laying the proper groundwork for a resilient symbiotic structure. The vapid exchanges of dating culture whose condensation wet our appetite for love like the artificial flickering of an electronic candle contents our want of flame, had been bartered for the silence of the fear of being alone for too long. But in the stillness of that moment, they finally paused.
We met for dinner that night and ate crappy Greek food. We joked, and laughed, and then, when it was time to say goodbye, we stood outside with anticipation in the air. Undeniably, I feel she wanted me to kiss her, and as much as I would have loved to, I felt it was a pull towards habit rather than that special moment in which nothing else would feel more perfect. We made plans to get donuts in the morning; she said she’d try to get to bed early. I walked home, drenched in the song of her existence, as my mind sorted out all of the words that I had only hours before, been able to slightly speak through poetry. I swore that the following day, I would hold her hands and tell her the truth of how she helped time stand still, and perhaps, take the moment to kiss her. The thought in and of itself, did something peculiar within me. It was like a beautiful electricity shot through my being (a feeling that I still feel now). I remember the first in the chain of thoughts coming into my head, that I felt that feelin would occur within me the moment that we actually did. I don’t think I have ever been that genuinely excited or impassioned for a kiss before, and if I was, it is so far in the past that I can’t remember.
My alarm was set for 7am, and I snoozed it for the next two hours, checking every time I woke to see if she had sent a text. I finally rolled out of bed at 9am, when my Uncle Rich called wondering when I would be coming to see him.
I waited around until 11:30am, before I decided to get in my rental and head to Blackhole Bakery, shooting a text to her before I went. She had just woke up while I was on the road, and I was due at the rental place by the latest 1:30p. As time crept on, all the moments that had dissipated the day before started to creep into my mind and body, solidifying themselves into every nook and cranny of my system. The awareness that the moment I had thought about the night before was likely not to happen mockingly began to waltz about in the open expanse of my thoughts. I came to fear that I had fucked up.
Blackhole was closed. They had run out of product by the time I had arrived. She wrote back to me “Well, I guess you’ll have to come back.” I expressed my wish that I had kissed her, and she teased “ Again… guess you’ll have to come back.” I boarded the flight, and as the distance grew between us, so too, did my understanding of the statistics stacked against me.
A woman statistically needs to only like three men on Tinder to find a match, while a man needs to swipe over 50. Women receive copious amounts of messages a day, while your typical man can easily keep up with his inbox throughout the week. I am over 1,200 miles away for the majority of the year, whereas there are many more local choices. if she continues to talk to the men who show an interest in her, there is a statistical likelihood that she will go on another date, and that date will follow the modern day dating module. That module will heighten the dopamine levels found in the expeditious exploits of sensuality, and within those, I may lose the possibility of her. The date may be more eventful, and in that, I may lose the possibility of her.
The moment I landed until this moment I write, a lot has occurred.
The days are long, I can feel every minute, The stillness she brought to me has stayed to show the impetus of the chasms time has wrought and importance of the moments I carelessly jumped between. I try my damndest to try and keep communication going, but have found my first full day since my return without a text.
Someone said to me once that in our lives, we will experience many lasts that are, and are without warning. When I think of that conversation, I think to Toy Story and the last time Andy played with Woody. There’s always something so prominent about that visual representation of something picked up, and placed down one final time as time marches mercilessly on. You see it with rusting shells of cars, left in the woods from a bygone era; names etched in trees and then forgotten as the tree carries the mark for its’ lifetime. The last day you speak to someone, or see someone. The last time you change your nieces diaper; the last time your kid asks you to tuck them in. The last time you say I love you to your great uncle, or the last time someone you see promise in sees promise in you. i don’t believe there will ever be a day, where to some degree, I don’t feel the weight of that fear of unknowingly stumbling across a last bearing down on me. I hope today isn’t the day.
There lies two tunnels at the end of a dirt path, and covered by grass, somewhere in Westportal, New Jersey. They were once important, as tunnels that brought travelers from WestPortal to Allentown, but today, you’d be more likely to drive passed them without ever knowing they were there. The tunnel built in 1878 became to small to be used, and in 1923, a second tunnel was built - the electric work done in it by my great grandfather, Arthur. Their barren passages are rich with a history that time threatens to erase, trekked only by the adventurous few who dare to traverse the damp, lightless depths that my great grandfather was once responsible for bringing to life. its been 100 years since the newest one was built, and since it has seen its’ last Allentown-bound traveler, and my great grandfather has seen his last light.
Not far from there is a giant green house, on Norton Church Road, where my great grandmother, Pearl Edna was born to her father and mother Jacob and Mary Esther. The building still stands, but there was a day that saw her leave for the last time; a day that saw Jacob push his last barrel of hay.
As I sat in the back of my little brothers’ white Honda, separated by my brother Jason by my Uncle Rich’s walker, my uncle Rich sat in the front seat, pointing to a collapsed barn next to a museum that was just a house.
”Go around and check the back of that barn,” he said “Tell me if there is still hay piled up on that second floor. If it is, i put it there as a child.”
We had already went by a tree that lay in the woods decaying at the very spot he said it would be, that he and his brother, my Great Uncle Jake had chopped down as teenagers, more than 70 years prior. I had though then, that it wouldn’t have been very outlandish.
It was a brilliant and melancholy thought, that imbedded there, was the last hay ever loaded into that barn, and that I could connect it witht he man who sat just a sea tin front of me.
The back of the barn was caved in, however. There were only a few pieces of jutting metal visible beyond the rotting wooden planks of its’ wall and roofing. The support beams for the second floor itself were termite infested, and looked highly unstable. Still, I took the time to treasure the moment that we were able to be told this history. To be able to see the roots of this 94 year old man, who has since gone and travelled the world and can now tell me the roads to take and the tings to see whenever I get to where I am going.
That was the day after I arrived back home from Kansas.
Sunday, November 5th.
We ended that day at Clinton Diner, where we laughed of Uncle Rich stealing fries and coleslaw from my oblivious brother, Jason. I spent the night in a hotel, after Jason brought me to pick up my car at Metropark Station. While I am happy that that day was able to happen, there sits a part of me still, that wishes my trip in Kansas was longer, so that in the midst of learning our family history, I could possibly tell my Uncle Rich of Tinderella and the daydreams we could’ve maybe solidified into reality.
On Monday, I went and saw one of my best friends, Wes and his fiance, Jess. Tuesday I stayed over his place yet again. We learned about different types of batteries that are able to be created at home, and the mechanics behind engines. I began, once again, to work on my comic, and for the first time in a while - in this prolonged stillness of time, I began to think seriously about my future and how to acheive it.
The promotional jobs I usually work have been scarce lately, quieter than usual. I feel disconnected from this world I once was on the inside of, and I still don’t wish to compromise my ability to travel and work.
On Wednesday, I saw my friend Mike that I had not seen in close to two years. The baby I saw at his parents house was walking and talking now. As teenagers, we grew up together. Every so often, I would sleep in his car or his parents house when I didnt feel like goin home, or I was actually homeless. We had a lot of adventures, in those days - and that kind of bond formed a kinship. His daughter, who was just a baby when I last saw her, took a liking to me almost immediately. Like I had been an ever present uncle, she latched onto me at the dinner table and said “ I love you,” and planted a small kiss on my arm.
Just yesterday, I arrived at my friend Ron’s house to stay inside of his vacant Airbnb room full of the Albamaians stuff , and since I have whirled in barrage of thoughts connecting this moment tot he next. My brain wonders about what is next for me, and how it is that i can build the future I want; I plan my trip up the east coast to see those I havent seen in some time, and I wonder how to show my care and worth and remain relevant to a woman in Kansas City, who I sincerely hope has not seen promise for the last time in me.
And finally, I think, somewhere, beneath the surface, a new adventure most definitely brims.
