The Life Dramatic

Adventure People Dave, and Mary, find adventure through the hands of a Child

I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François I and Charles V.
-- Proust, Swanns Way

When they make the movie of your life
They're going to have to ask you
To do your own stunts
Because nobody nobody nobody
Could pull off the same shit as you
And still come out alright

If you're losing your wings
Feather by feather
Love the way they whip away
On the wind
-- (smog), Feather by Feather

As it often does, the week ended with a Sunday afternoon at the cinema. I like to sit close, within the first two rows from the screen. Why would people want to sit near the back? I want it as spectacular as I can get it. The adventure unfolded in a flicker of light and sound. Bill Murray as Steve Zissou, in The Life Aquatic. Blue seas. choppers, and diving gear with emblems. It is here, in front of a massive sheet of vinyl. sitting in the dark, where I can forget everything, and become part of the fiction. Then the credits roll, and I walk home with a stomach ache.

Every night the past week, I dined with a different party. Often celebratory, sometimes melancholy, but never dull. Sake, sakune, yakitori, coconut rice, bottle after bottle of wine, pitchers of sangria with endless tapas, flat cut sashimi, Makuayaw Kai, tomolives, havarti, spicy peppers, pints of beer in dingy bars on the strip, and cosmopolitans overlooking the harbour. A night didn't go by where I dined at home. The fridge is empty, and useless.

There were moments throughout the week worthy of a film crew. The band I recently joined practised until 2:30 in the morning Friday. Until finally someone in the residential space above the warehouse found the fuse box, and cut the power on us. So we took a guitar, and two candles out to the couches. I sang Woody Guthrie songs by candlelight until the sun came up. The next night I got into an argument on my street. Not the one I live on, but the one that I share a name with. It was late, and cold. The breath from our heated voices filling the air like a smoke stack fills the atmosphere with unknown dangerous material.

There was violence too. I got ripped off by a drug dealer on the corner one night. He took my twenty dollar bill, and slipped me two plastic kinder egg surprise containers, of course they were empty. Well, I took off after him, up the alley, I snuck up behind him and just as I was about to grab him, he bolted. The sound of a chase through an alley, feet pounding on cold grey concrete, it was exhilerating. He was screaming, "fuck you!" the whole time we were running. Which was a mistake, because it slowed him down. I managed to kick his foot which tripped him, sending him tumbling to the pavement face first at full speed. I reached into his jacket pocket to take back my twenty dollars while he held his face in pain, rolling around benaeth me at the top of the alley. I returned his empty plastic eggs.

And now it's Monday. I have swept the broken glass from the floor, and washed the blood off the sheets. I even bought some groceries, so that maybe I could make my fridge feel wanted. I have a special guest, someone to cook for, to look after, to hug repeatedly. A different kind of week altogether, but still, the drama continues. I find my thoughts clouded with worry for someone that really, simply deserves better. I am lucky, I learn this more and more each day. So tonight, I will dream of Cate Blanchett reading Proust aloud, the transformative powers of a dark theatre on a Sunday afternoon, and the toys of my youth.