Perfect Weather is Invisible

It’s 4:52 pm in California.

I’m typing in a restaurant booth, surrounded by ocean. The weather is roughly a perfect 70 degrees. All elements are undetectable, except for the occasional warm ray of sun, or soft cool breeze to remind me to be grateful that the weather has chosen to be flawless.

I refer to myself as the “retired seatmate” for obvious reasons… some of the people who’ve randomly sat next to me on airplanes have changed; no, they’ve rerouted my life…

This time zone has maybe an hour before the sun will abandon us. The rest of America has already been dark for hours. And with December dusk also arrives a chilly front. But that won’t prevent me from relishing the view. There is pale light shining through the thick, plush, creamy and rose-colored clouds, suggesting there indeed, are heavens above.

On airplanes, I’ve met a man who saved my life. I’ve sat next to a woman, who is now one of my dearest friends, another woman who lost her leg to the same disease that nearly killed me. There has been someone from my past and someone who paved way for my future. And several days ago I sat next to a person who was desperate, no deserved for somebody, anybody to care. And I was too tired.

The glowing ball of fire will cautiously dip into the waves, but as soon as you blink, the sun will have vanished. The pink and yellow and azure blur your vision. The pigments of the buildings, cars, trees and sailboats weaken; the gravity of the ocean beckons the sky. The two will be enveloped by darkness for the next twelve hours and cannot be pulled apart until tomorrow morning.

December 6, 2009 will disappear forever and everything that happened with it. All those who have been born, all those who have passed away, the laughter, the tears, the firsts and the lasts, the choices and actions that dissect our lives, some more pivotal than others. Canonized and captured in photographs, facial expressions turned shadows, voices turned whispers. Just memories.

And before you realize today is over. It has past.

Empathy is a virtue- it is. It is much easier to be kind to strangers, because the assumption is that you’ll never see them again. In my aisle seat I am stressed and exhausted and frustrated. This man asks me how I am and my response is a single syllable “fine.” I’m chugging my then-cold Starbucks.

He asked why I am traveling. I spit out an effortless response, “a hybrid of travel and pleasure.”

Then out of guilt, I mumble, “you?”

Quietly, he says the word I hoped I wouldn’t hear, “family.” He stares at the seat in front of him with sad and empty eyes. He wasn’t waiting, but I could sense that he invited conversation. Myself, pop culture, business, bullshit, chatter, worthless nothingness… anything that wasn’t related to whatever misfortune required booking a plane ticket eight hours ago. But I voluntarily chose not to care. It wasn’t my problem. And so I put on my headphones and then fell asleep.

Now protected by large, gray… molecules of condensation packed tightly, the sun’s fever cannot reach me. Dusk is heavy with a freezing, angst. I’m shivering and my fingers are slow, taking longer to type, and this does not surprise me.

When the flight attendant walked by with the beverage cart I woke up. Completely forgetting our quick exchange I glance over to see if he wants anything to drink. But he is sound asleep. I understood. I’m an insomniac, and the only restful sleep tends to be on any mode of transportation, a car, a plane, and a boat, train. Any vehicle transporting me from then to now… I then wonder if he is dreaming. There are only two dreams for me – they consist of two plots – my family is in harm and it is my responsibility to save them. Or the other dream where I’m flying and the closer and closer I am to landing, the farther away the ground becomes. Maybe he has no dreams, no fantastical thoughts, playing in his head, I wasn’t sure.

He must be around fifty-five or sixty years-old? He seems like a nice, hardworking, family man. A father probably. His hands are intertwined and resting on his lap. He is wearing a wedding ring, it is worn, and I could tell hadn’t been removed in years.

The sun has long since left California. The goose bumps crawling on my arm are begging me to move inside, but this air, this fresh pacific oxygen is far more exhilarating than the electric heaters inside. So I will sit here freezing, calmed by the cadence of waves, and remember what this man said to me only 72 hours ago.

We landed in Los Angeles on time. The man was awake and quiet next to me. I didn’t desire to know where he was going and why. I didn’t have the emotional space, the empathetic room to take on the pain, the anguish of some stranger, it wasn’t my job.

“I hope you have a great trip. California is a lot of fun.” He said genuinely. Vicariously, maybe, maybe just polite. Not too sure.

“Thanks. Good luck with, wherever you’re going.” I said, the comment racing out of my mouth,
“I’ll need it.” He said. He played with the gold band.
“What happened?” And then the journalist in me got the best of me.
“My wife was in a car accident, a semi-truck hit her Volvo.” He paused searching my face to see if I wanted more. I revealed nothing.

“She was on her way to Arizona to pick up our son up from college. Anyway, she died last night. I couldn’t get there in time.” He choked. The truth, his nasty, cruel reality got caught in his esophagus.

“I’m so sorry.” Was all I could muster.

I wandered to baggage claim in a daze. The question screams, “Why do all these stories land next to me on airplanes?” For once, can’t a boring, silent stranger share my armrest, someone unaffected?

But airplanes are never that simple.

He walks ahead of me, carrying a small hunter green duffel bag, to his connecting flight, a steel tube to fly him to a nightmare beyond comprehension. A brutal kick of reality, and I was about to sit on a beach and write and share cocktails with friends. I was off to parties and glitzy experiences.

Life isn’t just unfair, it is bitter, unforgiving, a visceral uncertainty we cannot predict. Each moment encapsulated by the illogical, however pleasurable or painful. We endure. There is no choice.

It’s 5:53 pm and my pupils are wide. They are subconsciously searching for light in the black that has flooded the vibrant, rich sunset the coast was tasting moments ago. The moon has begun its crawl across the veiled horizon and the stars are starting to glisten. I can faintly make out the slices of silver touching the rolling current, illuminating the sound, as they crash onto the beach.

I cannot see the undertow.... the strength of moon's pull.... It is hiding underneath the waters surface. But I know once the wave hits the shore and the foam dissipates on the wet sand, it will be violently sucked back into the depths of the ocean.

It’s invisible. But nonetheless it’s there, waiting.

Twilight Zone

Washington Park is centrally located in the wholesome city of Denver … grass generously spread across acres, sprinkled with gardens, ponds and walking trails. The usual crowd on weekday afternoons is comprised of runners with labs, bikers in packs, girls power walking and gossiping, newlyweds pushing strollers, sometimes a lone soul reading or sketching under a maple tree. And my favorite, people walking their dogs. Dogs tend to match their owners, no?

A dozen neon pink dresses stand out against the green… ruffles and braids of black hair are what I noticed entering the park this past Saturday. White chairs and a podium are planted next to several rose beds. There is a woman in a white, and suddenly I realize this is quite the colorful Spanish wedding. Twenty yards further I notice two small boys with dark complexions in penguin suits following their father decked out in tails… headed for the opposite side of the park to another wedding. What was it? International day of nuptials?

Two blonds in full-out Irish dresses waltz by, I fully expected them to offer whatever was on tap… Rounding the corner there are four hippies playing foursquare. Squatted nearby are their girlfriends, touting dreadlocks by a bonfire. Yes, a bonfire at 4pm in sunny, dry, heat. Near the lake are two midgets, mid-fifties, chuckling on at a picket table, their shrunken legs barely able to reach the ground, alternately tossing a bone into the water for their cocker spaniel. There are tennis players sweating and chugging Gatorade… guys without shirts throwing Frisbees and impressing groups of gals lying out in bikini tops on towels. There is a father teaching his daughter how to ride a bike without training wheels, and her mother snapping photos of the milestone. And the older couple, peacefully sitting on the park bench together, hair the same shade of silver… hands interlaced, and while I couldn’t see any words exchanged, knowing eyes told me a different story.

Observing the busy park robust and bursting with energy – the two watched from afar, enjoying the Saturday afternoon from a far wiser place, and from years of memories I’d yet to experience.

I confess that whenever I see someone older in a coffee shop, grocery store, or post office, and alone- it tugs my heart, it saddens me… In my twenties it is expected to be independent, and even down the road there are friends, family, commitments and careers to keep busy. But to reach my seventies or eighties without someone else I believe is my gravest fear – to reach the end, and have nobody bear witness to my life.

When I saw the elderly couple this past weekend, their image was the antithesis of loneliness… there was an overwhelming sense of closeness. When they noticed I had been watching them, they gave me a little wave... softly smiling, as though they had been keeping a secret for decades.

CHAMPAGNE FOR THE HOMELESS... it's a screwy world...

Exposed skin, matte with dirt, the debris from unending days without a shower, thin hair framing sunken dark eyes, eyes that have witnessed a world I cannot begin to fathom.

Not more than 23. But limp shoulders suggest weathered years far more challenging than her young body deserves.

Walking down the 16th street en route to the magazine, in a hurried pace. Cell phone glued to my ear with my Burberry bag swung over my Marc Jacobs jacket I reek of shallow, and rounding the corner I almost drop my blackberry. Normally greeted with the older men grinning and drunk with crooked teeth and shopping carts spilling with garbage mixed with sleeping bags. My morning has taken an unanticipated turn, encountering this woman who stripped of her ripped clothing would be mistaken as one of my own.

With no dog-eared cardboard scrawled with a pitiful message, she wasn’t begging for money, but curled up against the cold brick. Already stopped, it was too late to walk back around the corner, and pretend to whistle my way around her. Barking bullshit moments prior into my cell, every item carved into my brain, stressing my afternoon out dissipated when our eyes locked.

It wasn’t envy, it wasn’t jealousy, not a strained glare making me squirm with guilt, but her gaze was a simple, curiosity.

This awkward exchange transpired in seconds. Unsure if I should dig through my wallet for whatever cash I had, or if I should quicken my pace past her, I quietly said hello.

She said, hello. And similar to two strangers riding on an elevator, whose lives cross too quickly to care, she intercepted my day in a way I cannot shake. Her gaze shifted back to her feet, which were neatly tucked under her tattered jacket.

Our shared moment was over and I continued to walk toward my office. My warm and decorated office, overflowing with excitement and creative energy, and designer bags, a place where we plan extravagant parties with the intention to rid the world of homelessness.

My gut now emptied of stress was empty with empathy. Not pity, nor distraught with the burden of trying to figure out how to save one girl, instead of Starbucks my afternoon was interrupted with sadness. A reality I’ve easily avoided. But I couldn’t anymore, a woman close to my own age, whose existence is juxtapose to my privileged life, cold and hungry huddled on the pavement ten yards outside of my office right now, and somehow be okay with it.

Oh Drama is fabulous!

“If you’re bored – you’re probably boring.”

Just walked out of the drugstore and of course next to the gum and lighters were the standard Us Weekly and People. Those are glossies I veer away from (and sometimes sneer at), and while the juicy gossip (most of it fictional and apparently so) are delightful to indulge in – an outlet for the humdrum individual to tip-toe into a fantasyland where toned bodies and thousand-dollar handbags are the norm.

How does one separate the drama from our own lives and the drama in the magazines, the “FOX NEWS ALERT” some baby was born in Hollywood… the TV shows dedicated to excavating any dirt on the famous, digging through their rubbish and scrutinizing every ensemble choice… and how is that entertaining? Why couldn’t the energy we allocate to the energy we pay attention to these people… to something more, like ourselves? Or even better – the people we love?

Does one want to separate the drama off the big screen and now the music scene from the trivial drama that gives color and dimension to our lives (or mine)?
And then there is Obama and he was chastised for being a celebrity himself? When does it end… with us? Facebook and Myspace and Twitter and GPS cell phone tracking devices are only helping this addiction we have not just with each other, but a fierce addiction to ourselves. People now have the tools to create their own fan clubs (both real and virtual), but where is the line drawn, or maybe it’s better if it wasn’t… Is productivity a result of all this networking, or are these sites encouraging cultish behavior. Truly what is more alluring than being convinced by masses of people that our existence reeks of celebrity… which is really a screwed up way of saying we illicit curiosity... But I have to say that a spoonful of excitement never did any harm… in fact it’s a lovely, picture-friendly way to show you care about something, that you love them so much to get all dramatic.

I’m guilty: Opening the pages of the mag and when my eyes hit my byline, By: Auna Jornayvaz...A silly tickle starts at my toes and by the time it has snaked its way to my brain (Note: I don’t say ego- my managing editor puts me at my place with her red pen) … I’m focused on my next project, researching the next article, collaborating some sponsorship or scribbling some blog entry. The cycle of running away from the evil of boredom has already begun! And some have the nerve to call me a Drama Queen!

Musicians, Writers and Radio DJs the opportunity to code cryptic messages in lyrics, stories, or poems – privy to the mass public, so while strangers interpret and translate and entangle PERSON A's soul into their own life.... one wonders - what might happen if artists didn't let their soul bleed into the minds of the public? Those who seem to regularly read this blog (and readers who don’t- have voiced their thoughts- AND THANK YOU!!!). And without doubt I’ve exercised this blog in a myriad of ways, from dissing bachelors, celebrating Mark Cuban, missing Australia, but recently I admit the website has been a catalyst to voice my deep fears – not to navigate my way around serious conversations with people who are actually characters in my life, but because these emotional obstacles are ones I believe readers can identify with, and maybe won’t feel so alone when signing out. Emotions that we can rationalize our way out of tend to make us (me) feel isolated, and so if a twenty-something chic can feel the same way – maybe even if their is a solution, there is empathy? And while there is a bigger world out there full of “dancing with the stars” and the magazines and TV convince us our days pale in comparison to the celebs... The drama, the unanswered questions, and the confuisng choices haunt us just the same as any movie star (sans the medication and therapists).

The only thing to fear is fear itself, right? I disagree… my biggest fear is boredom, and what is the opposite of boredom? Not relaxation, not a catnap or a break from the grind, or a round of golf… I’m referring to the type of boredom that strips people of genuine curiously, pushes them into dark, repetitive corners where years pass so slowly without pain or change. Some might say a color-coded day planner bursting with meetings, coffees, spinning classes, football games, dates and exclusive activities is the way to negate boredom…. and while I’m also guilty of that… my fear resides much deeper in my psyche… what if there wasn’t another story to chase? A stranger to befriend? A food to try, a country to visit, a song to hear and later dissect the lyrics - only to try and relate to an artist who doesn’t even know I exist. Who I’ll probably write a letter to only to tell them how much I adore their brilliance….And what would happen if there were no more books to read - the drama of others I can vicariously experience (and learn from)? Could we go back and rehash the past, relive every tantalizing detail – knowing we’d given it our all and our memories can keep us company forever?

Are these times contagious
I’ve never been this bored before
Is this the prize I’ve waited for
Now with the hours passing
There’s nothing left here to insure
I long to find a messenger

Have I got a long way to run
Have I got a long way to run
Yeah, I run

Is there a cure among us
From this processed sanity
I weaken with each voice that sings
Now, in this world of purchase
Im going to buy back memories
To awaken some old qualities – collective soul

I CAN'T HEAR YOU DARLING!

Naked fingers delicately paint the air with earnest volition. A woman in her late thirties is sitting cattycorner from me in a coffee shop. She is deaf. The man across from her has dark skin, maybe in his early or mid-forties. His soft eyes move along with her hands, absorbing and translating. He is speaking methodically, enunciating each syllable. The sounds he is making are of no value to her, she can only understand his lips.

Tables are strewn with textbooks and the small space is littered with Saturday afternoon enthusiasm. People with running shoes and dog leashes are sipping lattés. But through the minutia of the busy coffee shop, his voice is the only one I can hear.

His language is universally spoken and her language is not. I wonder what it feels like to observe life quickly swirling around you, a quicksand of time drowned by silence, and not be able to say anything about it. And the same loud world is blind to her. I wonder if the glass wall is rose-colored, or does she even notice it exists? I wonder if the silence keeps her from her feeling chilly and isolated, as painful words have the power to do. Do voices make her feel invisible or maybe invincible because she might not know how many words, discussions, and feelings are wasted or neglected? Words are so easy to toss around when there is little effort in receiving them. Might there be any freedom in living a life mute of nonsense?

Did they both go to trouble to learn how to understand the other? All that for a date?

It’s odd. Typing and people watching, a joyful scenario any writer can relish, and recently I’ve run out of what to say. My paragraphs are mechanically imperfect and my thoughts lack structured coherence, but every sentence is woven together with truth as much as confusion. Each word inserted not for cadence, but rather for interpretation. Enough of a twist to separate myself from the text messages and emails and bored journalists, you have to reread, only if to forget. While not oppositional, truth and confusion are close cousins, one often resulting in the other, a by-product or a leftover… Life seems to be layered with uncovering truth and subsequently being confused knowing it now exists. Threatening or benign, truth can’t be deleted or recovered, it just is, and the only choice we have is to accept it, or walk away.

“I did let them know our plan was to quietly celebrate in the mountains, just the two of us. Or I thought I made it clear. ” He explained with frustrated scrawled on his face.
About five seconds passed where she deftly orchestrated motions into the air. Not placidity, but she was calm with a reassuring nod.
“I’m sorry. I know you didn’t want a bunch of people over to your place, go grocery shopping and cook, etc. with moving next weekend. Do we need to call a moving company?” His voice dropped an octave.

She didn’t sign back. Instead reached for both of his hands.

I hope I can pack all 171,000 Oxford approved words into my cranium. Extracting the appropriate idiom or synonym, inserting it into conversation, so the person with whom I’m speaking can accurately understand me. But dialogue is a struggle. Microsoft Word allows me to backspace, add and shuffle sentences around, so when I hit save, or send, it’s done with cognizance. Packaged, wrapped with spell check and removed of any extraneous blunders that otherwise would have weaseled their way into a phone call or after dinner cocktails.

And so I digress. This woman gently staring into the eyes of this man, understands exactly what he is feeling and with no audible exchange. I’m starting to wonder if maybe words can be more of a barrier than a bridge.

American Sign Language has 7,200 expressions. Does she desire such dexterity, intimacy with a convoluted vocabulary, 26 letters that if formulated correctly can create literature, masterpieces and lyrics, newspapers and opinions? If you don’t know how the words sound can your conscious talk to you inside of your head? Or is there just the peaceful silence I still fail to locate in my sleep.

Reaching for her bag, a strange emptiness swept over me. I guess these two people, who probably haven’t noticed I’m sitting across the room watching them gave me a silly hope that some things might be worth fighting for, had to go.

Before the two walked away, abandoning me with iTunes and a hundred images to dissect and reassemble. I saw him do something that I know every couple does. He lips parted and without a sound he mouthed, “I love you.”

Ran Away from Freedom

For miles yesterday I ran. I ran away from my to-do lists and piles of laundry. It’s so freeing to watch the world from a pair sneakers, never know what tidbits of life you can see from the pavement. The stories about the couples holding hands, the dogs walking their owners, the strollers being pushed by twentysomethings in maturity clothing, laughing together. Enjoying a moment they're never aware I’m sharing with them, but only for a second, until they're out of sight and behind me.

Viridian camouflage, unmistakable and identifiable from an airport, grocery store aisle, or the front page of the newspaper. The thick material soaked in variations of greens and tans, like a habit to a nun, concealing the body to hide it of its humility, or more likely when it’s a woman, her feminity.

With the bulky boots and stoic expressions, there might as well have had a botox booth set up for the returning army. Underneath the helmet I see eyes looking out to the bodies of civilians that have come to support the troops, arriving in their minivans, with toddles crying and bulky jackets. I’m at 16th and Wynkoop in Downtown Denver and there is a small group of soldiers and a smaller group of citizens, some PR attempt to bring the world back together. The soldiers and the audience are trying to make conversation, polite chatter consisting on anything other than the obvious.

One pair of eyes shadowed by the brim of a helmet catch mine as I run by. I feel guilty that I don’t stop, that I don’t wave, that instead of making eye contact I turn up my ipod and sprint farther away. Running from the eyes that have witnessed a world I cannot even imagine.

The November sunset makes the air chillier and suddenly the warmth of the afternoon has left and my pace is quickened against the gravel. My legs are fatigued and my lungs angry at the altitude. And even though the reality check of soldiers returning home from war is blocks away, I'm not ready to return to my quiet apartment. The soldiers now healed from the shrapnel wounds, the lacerations so horrific, leaving veterans strapped in wheel chairs, those are courageous ones. The ones I want to run up and hug and cry and thank for their strength and endurance. But right now I don't want to. I’m tired.

I reach out at every opportunity I get. I know this. I met a woman in an airport in Austin, she was taking her boots off at the metal detector and I tapped her shoulder, “I don’t know you, but I admire you,” is what I said. She had been deployed several weeks after delivering a baby girl. Can you imagine leaving an infant to powdered milk and instead of rocking and singing lullubyes, hauling a machine gun around the Middle East?

Whenever I see the uniform of patriotism I wince. A bit of guilt for not volunteering as often as I should, a bit of pride to be a native of the same country, but I mostly wince because I don’t want to understand the pain they know, they have felt and that will torture them. I prefer to run far away from the news stations and reality that our world isn’t really the dogs, and strollers and couples laughing over triple vent lattés, it’s a world outside our fictious peaceful American walls. A world where suffering is the norm and people’s only chance for freedom is running away....

How would children ever learn to walk if they were afraid to fall?

Randomness Extracted from 2007....

"How would children ever learn to walk if they were afraid to fall? A bearded man orchestrating jovial arms through a brown tweed jacket; coos at who I'm assuming to be his grandchild. Clutching the two-year-old inside the fluffy pink dress, blond curls topped with a bow, squeals in delight as her grandpa picked her up and swung her into the air, never letting her go. Unconsciously safe within her grandfather’s grasp, the child laughed freely into the sky. The two unaware, through the crowds outside of FAO Swartz , I'm sitting next to my crutches, and my eyes are watching them.

When in life do we begin to hold on? When do we start looking for railing by the staircases? Once we’ve balanced our choices on the assurance and stability of the ground, are we disabled from unfolding our arms and trying to fly? Are we constantly eyeballing underneath us, into our future in search for a net? Find some inflatable cushion to pad our fall, so gravity doesn’t throw us against the floor too hard, physical pain teases mental sanity, but it’s temporary, and easy to forgo. The mental stuff… that stays locked in our memory forever.

My laptop teeter-tots on my left leg as I pound my thoughts into Microsoft Word, the movements of the laptop shake and stir with the hesitation and hurry as each letter, like each pigment, creates a word, like pigments makeup a picture. The process of remembering feels similar to fingernails on a snare drum, a lone beat, penetrating silence, echoed with a rattlesnake voice that erects goose bumps. The single tap on the snare ignites sound, and although it fills the air with a single octave, the sound is empty of rhythm. Without the base, the cymbal, and the lyrics, the beat of the snare rips through time momentarily, only to remind us how alone a sound can feel. The single snap of a snare can shatter a daze, but it cannot rummage inside of our hearts without the help of another sound, the resonance of two hits you differently.

Sometimes silence is far more deafening than noise.

The vision of the child dissipates into the autumn foliage as I slowly crutch away from the crowded sidewalk. I'm invisible to the street venders and New York businessmen briskly scurrying through their day. Only aware of themselves, they are tending to the necessary tools of cell phones and watches, reminding those of importance to quicken their cadence against the New York Tar."