blue bayou
overlooking expectations of america, from a glance in the land of the morning calm.
There is turbulence over the middle of the Pacific. An orange glow stings the top of the plane. It is not the sunrise, but a mood light of sorts. To comfort, to move bodies through time zones.
People on planes are babies. Assigned cribs, food and water. Blankets. To cry, you call, a little signal for someone to take care of you.
But I cannot sleep. I don’t know if it’s the time zone or if it’s the anxiety of flying in the midst of a pandemic.
I delete duplicate pictures off of my photostream. Old memories. People, some I don’t even talk to anymore. I think of you and when I do, I’m always apologizing. I’m sorry for sending curt messages. I’m sorry I was so occupied with stress near the end of the year. I’m sorry I’m not enough.
Picture of food and coffee. Too much coffee. Now, when I think of Seasons of Love, I really do measure my years in cups of coffee.
When I’ve deleted a handful, I put on a movie. Blue Bayou. Justin Chon. Second best. I watched Ms. Purple before. He is the tender (Red Rocket director), portraying stories of people like him, broken and in search of untangling struggles. Here we have a Korean adoptee, husband and father to a wife and daughter, and another on the way. It’s more than its buzz themes that have haunted us since the beginning of the pandemic. ICE, what it means to be American, immigrants, police brutality. It is about a return to birthright, what makes us and what carries us. It is also about a Vietnamese woman who (main character) befriends as they seem to be the only two Asian Americans in filmgrain New Orleans.
Survival through story.
Story through survival.
How do we hand out rafts or lifeboats to push against white currents, blank understanding?
The flight isn’t long. It’s an average work shift. But as I shuffle my body in different position of comfort, I only end up in discomfort. I wonder if this is age. I wonder how long the pandemic will go for, how long it will continue to rob me of my twenties.
My thirties are just round the corner. And that terrifies me because I haven’t learned a thing. My finances are the same. My problems are the same. I do the same thing wherever I go. I meet the same toxic people, new ones, different versions of old ones, that I can never seem to get rid of. I am the same s I ever was.
Here’s another sameness, I’m reading Ali Smith’s Autumn, a part of her seasonal quartet. The last Smith book I read was when I was in France, when I’ve felt the very sameness I’m feeling now. This isn’t coincidence. This is a cycle. Fierce in teenage angst. I don’t know where the motions come from, this treading of water.
What I like about Smith’s literature is that it’s a means for drowning. It’s a large pool of vagueness, but in that is the possibility of finding your own path, forming your own thoughts so that the song, through her lyrical and swift prose, speaks to you and you alone.
In my half-walk, dreams try to enter my body. A dream about my ex and our fight in the street. He says leave and I do. In another dream, my father asks me for my happiness, but I am speechless, because I have none to offer.
I’m not sure what I’m coming home to, but it is definitely change. I come home to missing restaurants, favorites, and piles of memories.
My seat overcrowds with so much discomfort that I unbuckle myself and push my seat back, throw my legs in front of me and my breath cracks. There is a pandemic and two people pull down their masks to kiss. In a deep sleep, a man snores. A violinist rolls his wrist in circles, practicing chords. A mother turns to her daughter, constantly, as if to make sure she is there, unchanged and hers. I see so much of the world on this plane that I shut my eyes and sleep, finally.
