Yesterday, all I was trying to do was get some peace and quiet by the largest ocean in my vicinity.
The Pacific beckoned and I planned to caress her and appreciate her like a long neglected lover I tumbled onto in a cheap hotel in a hidden city where no one knew our names.
I was going to Big Sur.
I couldn’t help but crank up The Thrills, an Irish band that upon their first travels to California, jetted home right away and crafted an ode to the coast.
“So much for the city…” it sings as the album opens.
“This is why I know you!” I shouted over the chords and mangled sounds starting up from the stereo.
(“Stereo.” Will that word become obsolete faster than the next edition of some Internet application or iPod gadget peddled by the Apple seducers we all know and rise to too well?)
Mustacho looked inquisitive, taking in my sudden jubilant mood and shoulder rocking. “Really? How so?”
“If I’d not gone to that book store, dreaming of California and searching for a gift for my California amiga, and if this music hadn’t been playing, I’d have never met Jeremy {his band mate at the time}. I’d have never met you.” I nodded affirmatively, to seal the deal, and mostly to acknowledge and respect the album spinning.
“I like that,” he said, joining me in a head shake to the California anthem as we headed down the 101.
We landed at Point Lobos, a park with a trail through the flat ridges and ocean sides that beckoned the lazy tourist. We rolled in and out of fog, in and out of Monterey, then through Carmel to its juncture with the park.
The cold had surprised my legs which had left an overheated apartment and San Francisco. We took a detour to the Seaside Target, where Jaguars lined the handicapped spaces.
“How about these?” Mustacho asked, holding forth a black sweatpant suit with long white strips on the side.
I grimaced. “I’ll never wear that again.” Mustacho paced before puttering towards the lingerie.
I hunted and gathered and hunted and gathered until I found just the right long pants – pants I’d reuse! Pants that were silky in my hand and beckoned me to come. Pants I could sleep in! And a pink nightgown, jus t because. Mustacho shook his head, rolled his eyes, and escorted my skipping self out of the store.
We passed two women on that trail, one with a Grateful Dead T, overly consumed with her little pink digital camera and oddly turning to face a mound of dirt and some invisible varmint. Another woman in a green pullover trailed her, mesmerized by her phone, sucking in her fingers and eyes and all her attention.
Ha, I thought, self righteous and true. Boy, they’re missing it all.
It was then that I heard my name called. I spun around. The phone woman was calling me.
“Lisa?” I asked, squinting to shape my eyes beneath her cap and shades. I rose my head to the trail above her. “Frances?”
“Hey!” they shouted, Frances far less enthused (as I was in the casserole of reasons for her departure from our last mutual place of employment. No worries though; I got it in the end). She said my name like a balloon letting the air out. She looked slightly older, more relaxed and human, settled back in her eyes.
“I can’t believe its you,” Lisa hugged me. I’d trusted her once. But now she was with the enemy.
And I was in green striped, oh so soft … pajama pants. With a large green sweater to match and hair and face so undone…I’ll just say that I could feel the shame on behalf of my mother, 3000 miles away, and all her ancestors.
We did the chit chat.
“What are you doing here?” (me)
“I’m here for a conference” (right by my apartment it seemed) “but decided to come down here to see this beautiful place!”
How lucky was I?
Of all the trails on the West Coast, in Big Sur, and at that second of the day and in those pajama pants…
It all got quiet from there.
“Let’s talk about that album you want to record,” Mustacho said when we walked away. He took my hand and tried to skip and distract all of my mind with his body’s movements. But my mind was frozen. My mind was stuck.
Back to years before, or a dense sense of being. Of sadness. Of something I really couldn’t articulate. The fog may have been lifting from the coast to beckon sunset, but It had found a way to settle through avenues of my mind.
We let Stephen King’s biographical half of On Writing accompany us home. It was soothing over my wounds of the day. My happy go lucky self had packed it in for the night.
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