Deep In The Night

It's been a wierd day. I spent a lot of it reading Yes Man in Waterstone's, looking up periodically to see how the clientele of the cafe had been replaced with newer folk. The pleasant weather left with the Fringe and now all is grey and rainy. The streets are comparatively deserted. I came out of Waterstone's and walked the short distance down Princes Street to Henderson's for a late lunch. I'd brought the Free Hugs sign. I cracked it open.

And then something strange happened.

People avoided my gaze. They walked around me. Nobody smiled. They stode past staring at the pavement. The only people who opened their arms or acknowledged my existence at all were a couple of clipboard-holding volunteers from CARE who were out trying to recruit people for their organization. I guess they know what it's like, being ignored by pedestrians all day because you're carrying a dangerous-looking piece of office equipment.

Could the difference really be that great between Old and New Town? It appeared to be so. This couldn't just be put down to the end of the Festival. The occasional person who accidentally caught my eye invariably got a big smile from me and, in same cases, I could see them wanting to smile back, mouth twisted in a small, stifled expression of amusement or approval or longing, but none of them seemed able to open up. I was a stranger. I was dangerous. "Those hugs could be an excuse to take my wallet," they think, "Or squirt acid in my face or cover me in anthrax or turn me into a newt!"

And so where I'd been welcomed with open arms on the High Street, I was shut out and ignored on the other side of the Mound -- not half a mile away. Walking down Queen Street I got a few honks and some waves from people in cars, perhaps emboldened by their metal encasings, but that was it. I ended up catching a bus home around 6 and sitting morosely on the sofa writing letters. That cheered me up a bit, but the whole day had a really surreal tone to it.

Now I've been plopped down in a cosy armchair scanning the internet for remnants of my life in Ojai. Everyone I know has scattered themselves on the four winds to college. Everyone has left. Myself included -- but I wrote no farewell messages, had no goodbye parties, exchanged no class schedules. I left for different countries, not different educational systems. By the time I pack my room away for that journey all my friends and classmates will be world-weary Sophomores. My Freshman compatriots will be a full year younger than I, and considering how much diffilculty I already have enjoying the company of the majority of my contemporaries, this doesn't bode well.

Will I survive the return to academia? Especially in a world as intense as Reed's? Freedom has engulfed me here. I am educating myself in life, in survival and adventure, not Classics and essay-writing. Even after I'm home I'll be back on tall ships for the summer, and that only means more love of freedom and life on the open sea to miss when I return to the reality of the hard with a distinct thud.

Kicking my head back against the sagging couch cushions, ear bus replaying songs from my early days. Songs I last heard out of scratchy record players and on cassette tapes. While watching a kid who had taught himself to swordfight with a broom write poetry. While eating pomegranites and slices of cold watermelon with gusto on the stairs. While watching my backyard burn. Faces of friends from the first grade run past my mind's eye. Sun-drenched sailing ship playgrounds. Leprechauns. Teachers. The swoop of my first costume on the hot blacktop. Waterfights during summer school. Dead pets. People I passed in the street today. Stewards at aquariums. Fish at aquariums. Sailors. Walking at midnight across the Saddle in barefeet. Sunsets. The view from Arthur's Seat. The smell of waking up in the Sierras on a morning full of snow. Mud baths in the Ojai summer. Old pajamas. Silk pillowcases. Christmas in my living room. Being proposed to on the edge of an icy mountain lake. Playing soccer with an orange in the rain on a street now devoid of the people I knew living on it. Best friends turned into strangers on foreign continents. My first show in the Zalk Theater. Immediate soul to soul connections struggling across the misunderstanding of great distance.

Where does all this go? I feel like I have this terrible responsibility to remember everything sometimes. I'll sit for an hour just thinking about all my memories. And even as I grasp the ones I've got, new ones swim up. Completely forgotten things. Memories that used to be standards. Favorites. Which I have forgotten for what? A week? A month? A year? And I'm only 18. Jesus.

Tomorrow I've got a quest, a purpose. Things will be better with a night's sleep. And, truth be told, I enjoy the time to think. Even if it's during late-night internet binges induced by too much tea before bed. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, really.

At least I'm not a moon tickler.

And for the explanation behind that enigmatic last remark I suggest you all go out and a) Hug a stranger, then b) Read Yes Man. Because it's bloody good.