February 24, 2006

Santa Monica 2/24/1996

From an old journal:

It's almost 3am. My friend died today. Cancer. She was only 26. I couldn't sleep.

I drove up PCH. The clouds were low. The ocean dull, dark, almost invisible. Hungry and awake, I drove inland and stopped at a diner somewhere in Ventura county. As always at diners I ordered a burger and key lime pie. The place was empty and Janet, the waitress poured herself a coffee, sat down with me, and talked about a dream of horses she had had many years ago. I talked about India and the things I had seen there. She asked a lot of questions about camels and monsoons and holy men. Except for the cook and a sleepy bus boy named Manuelito, there was nobody else. I didn't tell her about my friend. When I got up to go she told me to come again, turned the TV to old Star Trek episode. Kirk was fighting some alien guy. Janet said she had seen it before. "The Gorn," she says, "They are unstoppable."

I drove back down the coast past the lights and stopped on a deserted beach. I like to open the windows, crank the heater up, and listen to the waves. I sat there in the dark for a while with the radio playing static. The world seems less round on nights like this. Hard to imagine tommorrow much less ten years from tomorrow.

posted at 01:46 AM by raul

Filed under: personal history

Comments:

02/24/06 10:32 AM

thanks for sharing that, its hard to go back and think about the people you've lost... but sometimes necessary... its also necessary to just go back and see how you've changed... when i moved to l.a. and was homesick and hating it i started reading my old journals to remind myself why i moved out here, my dreams, etc... it definitely kept me motivated to stay the course...

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