Friday, April 4, 1997
TIME:
Confrontation, not escape, marked friend’s approach toward
lifeBy Dave Yu
1994, at "home home," San Diego. "Home" (singular) is Westwood
or the UCLA campus, depending on the hour of the day. Neither of
these surroundings allow for complete peace of mind.
I’m hanging out with some San Diegan friends, crashing at the
folks’, driving around town with my brother. That’s cool for a
little while, but even when school’s not in session and I’m nowhere
near lecture halls and exams, I still feel as if I am running.
Running from something? Running to stand still, as the surroundings
leave me chasing behind. I’m running on the escalator that takes
customers from Level 3 to 2, but the future is upstairs.
I spy an island near the midpoint of the escalator, and after
trying to navigate upward for a few silly looking moments, I hop
onto it. Kneeling there atop the island I see the contraption for
what it really is. The black rubber crawling in sidewinder steps is
water, rushing up to the shore. Rushing up to the shore to meet
beach sand that turns a darker shade of brown upon contact.
* * *
So there I am, on a makeshift "island," mid-afternoon on Torrey
Pines Beach in San Diego. The sun is out, and to properly observe
the sea, as it reflects an abrasive glare, I have to squint my
eyes.
From where I sit, I can see where the downward escalator ends
and meets Level 2 … where the beach sand turns wet and brown,
struck down and momentarily frozen in time and space by the ocean’s
touch. But in the following moments, the beach is washed over,
rewritten by the next wave.
As if an afterthought, a question rings off-key but loudly above
the shallow murmur of the oceanic creature: "What if …" But there
are no absolute answers, and nothing will ever be the same again
for a hesitant navigator. The cup is half empty.
Then I see them, two indistinct figures walking on the wet sand.
They seem to be dancing because the glaring light of the sun
reflects on water behind them, and the yellow rays shift with the
rhythmic tide. I was once one of these indistinct figures,
participating in this chimeric dance. My dance partner was Ally, a
dear friend of the time. Was it really that long ago?
Certain people enter our lives from out of the blue in the
physical sense, but somehow their appearance is a telegraphed
event, as if a space in our lives had been reserved for them years
earlier. To me, Ally was one of those people. Two years earlier, we
met through a mutual friend and we worked together during summer
and winter breaks. After our first shift together, we were good
friends. She was my elf friend, with her mystical charm and
charming ambition.
Our thoughts, our temperaments were in seemingly perfect
symmetry, and we saw the world through similarly wary eyes. It was
a difficult time for the both of us, feeling as if we were being
strangled by where we were, wanting to grow beyond the confines of
our surroundings that kept on moving us downward toward Level 2. We
wanted to escape from the contraption of our lives, feeling
constricted by the people we were expected to be by others and by
ourselves, and grappling with nebulous identities. Together on the
beach we began laying out the plans for an escape.
I couldn’t quite understand how my best friends could be
perpetually happy when all I could see were pervading reasons to
feel melancholy. Life sucked, damn it. The cup is half empty.
Back then I was living under the assumption that sadness,
madness, and a pinch of insanity and destruction could be converted
to "inspiration." And inspiration could be converted to the act of
creation, the results of which may have been amateur drawings and
wannabe rhetoric and prose (trash). But the act of creating itself
was what gave me purpose.
Ally had her own means of travel to Level 2. I won’t presume to
be able to explain what mechanisms were at play, but I will say
that her troubles were more "credible" than for the sake of
creativity and overcoming boredom. Thus, instead of grabbing a
sketch pad or writing a journal entry, she would lash out.
Ally was much better at expressing herself verbally than I,
myself being blessed with a trademark inarticulate monotone. Almost
by default then, I took up the role of listener. However, as we
spent more time together it became apparent that she would not be
there for me when I began drifting below again. We were dancing
chimeras, volatile beings who, when not holding each other up, were
likely to push each other over.
We never had the opportunity to put the finishing touches on
those escape plans.
1994, at "home home," San Diego. "Home (singular)" is Westwood
or the UCLA campus depending on the hour of the day. Neither of
these surroundings allow for complete peace of mind. Neither of
them stand still as time barrels along, neither of them offers
absolute answers.
These surroundings, and as a result, our lives, change so fast
that we are forced to adapt without question or get left behind.
The places we had been in the past may be static notions, conserved
in our memories, but a return to the places we have been will
reveal that these locations no longer exist in the material world.
They are physically changing, or we are no longer capable of seeing
the scenery in the same fashion as yesterday. The only proof that
such a past existed is a fragile memory, those moments frozen in
time and space as a set of feelings in our minds.
But soon, these too will disappear. We hardly have the time to
ask why this or that happened and what was done wrong. The cup is
half empty.
I still think about Ally sometimes when I visit the beach and
wonder if she’s OK, when I’m not thinking about academic probation
and earthquakes. We eventually had a falling out, a forecasted
event, surely, as was our meeting each other. I knew that we could
rest on that "island" together for only so long before one of us
fell over, but now we don’t talk to each other, and I give her the
cold shoulder whenever I happen to see her.
* * *
Two years later, summer 1996. It has been a while since I last
spoke to her, but after making a quick stop at Torrey Pines Beach,
I decided to call her. The resentment toward her had lost its
steam; the memories of our collision had faded. I missed her, I
missed the me she reflected, I missed the person I used to be.
"Inspiration" is harder to come by these days, as applying to
graduate school, applying to medical school and applying to the
future occupy much of my time. I’ve forced myself to accept that
"escape" is happenstance. I’ve learned to accept that there are no
absolute answers. We are better off avoiding the question "What if
…?" because time moves so quickly.
Ally is married now and is leaving San Diego. I’ll never see her
again, but I am happy for her because she has found the courage to
follow through.
The phone call took me back to the beach. There I saw those two
figures again, but this time, rather than dancing, they held each
other as if saying farewell. Then they start to move alongside each
other with purpose, running. Then one of them feels something under
her feet. She catches a gust of air, a dissonant but powerful wind,
a memory of a recent storm, and it lifts her off the ground. Soon
she is soaring in the sky, as if carried by elf magic. Sitting on
the beach, I see her flying, flying away. The other continues to
run, gaining speed.