Only When I Breathe (An Excerpt)

The plane shot over the Pacific Ocean and turned slightly. Turning back to the window, I looked down. There were piers below; long stretches of wood in man’s attempt to walk on water. The green of the ocean, too. Saw the waves roll against the endless wall of beach. The breakers like white fists against sand. Saw the Pacific Coast Highway, that beautiful stretch of road that runs from one beach town to the next and on up the coast.

Only a few months earlier I had driven on it. To Oxnard, an hour north of Los Angeles. A job interview. Weeks after moving back in with Davies. Los Angeles was only a temporary thing. I knew that. It was a chance to get me breathing again. To wake up from the numbing effect of divorce and the loss of a best friend. For the trip to Oxnard, I had opted against the train. The train could provide too much time alone with my thoughts, I had reasoned. Rented a car instead. I wanted the freedom of the road. Needed what it offered; a choice, something I had not experienced with the divorce. With a car, there would be no set destination. If I wanted to, I could just keep driving north through California.

And then there had been that moment of doubt.

I was in the car. I was leaving Los Angeles, before I hit the PCH, and I panicked. The brown skies beckoned me to stay. There was a certain amount of safety under them, I had thought. A bubble of comfort. A brown bubble that hung over the city. Clung to its buildings. Its people and their clothes. Filling their lungs. My lungs. I wondered how I could ever leave that polluted security. Why would I attempt it? Was there ever enough reason to just pack up and venture out from underneath that brown bubble?

The traffic out of the city was bad that day. Seemed everyone was headed to the ocean, but somehow still going nowhere. The car windows were down. I had Rush’s “I Think I’m Going Bald” turned up loud on the rental’s stereo. Even with the traffic, it felt good. It felt right to be there. But still I thought of turning around, of going back to the apartment. All because I was unsure of what exactly felt right about that moment. I kept driving, though. Made it through Palisades and onto the coast.

A red light made me pause.

And there it was. Right in front of me. The ocean. Its green-blue horizon stretched on as if it were background on a movie set. Seagulls overhead said otherwise. This was real. The temperature had cooled and the sun, my god, the sun felt good on my skin. I saw the end of the polluted air – where blue meets brown - and I wanted that. To be there. Felt the desire burning within me. In my lungs. My heart.
Something kicked within. The first dent on the shell around my heart. Something significant like that. Something that had been built by all the bullshit paperwork and legal fees. The harsh words. The broken trust. The beginning of the end of something; the weight of memory just cracked.

I made that turn onto the PCH. I followed its winding path chasing clouds and skies bluer than the ocean next to me. The smile on my face grew with each beach town I passed. The sun seemed to grow nearer, too. Its heat was everything in that moment. It was the right thing to do, I told myself again and again.
The right thing to do.

Because of a red light telling me to stop.

Because of the blue-green ocean.

Because of the heat of the sun.

The sun.

The sun.

The California sun.

When I reached Oxnard I kept driving. I drove past the building where my interview was to take place. I headed further west, on through the downtown area, and past the flat strawberry fields toward the white sand of the beach. I stopped and cut the engine. I sat in the car for a few more minutes unsure of my next move. I took a deep breath and climbed out of the car. I could feel the heat of the sand through my shoes. I walked clumsily, as each step I took sunk deep into the rich sand of the shore. It was the ocean I wanted. The sand’s surface became harder the closer I got to the surf.

And then I stopped. It was where the surf washed ashore. I took another deep breath and held out my arms. I stood there – a statue beneath the light of the sun – and looked up toward the blue highlights in the sky ribboned with white clouds.
Remember that feeling. Remember, I thought to myself in the plane as we ascended above the same white stitch of clouds. I turned away from the window. The stewardess was gone. She was behind a cart at the front of the plane. She was handing a drink to Smurf Tattoo Man. I was alone again.

“I am a whore for company,” I muttered. With the sun shining onto my face, I pressed play on my iPod and closed my eyes. Soon enough, swept gently by the rocking sounds of Band of Horses performing “The End’s Not Near”, I took to dreaming.

***

There was home. That sacred place. The place I dreamed of. A palace refined in memory. Where things were warm and sweet. Where things made sense and were colored pure. It was that home I searched for. In all the faces. In all the ways I took to the city, to the sky. Home. And so I was flying.

It was all wind to the face.

All wind to the face and blank expressionless clouds and there I was, falling – maybe flying – maybe all of the above, maybe not, but I kept my arms outstretched as I moved closer to the heat. Toward the sun. Away from my heart. Up. Up. I went up. To the heat of the sun. Above radio antennas knifed into the ground. Toward castles of clouds cut by rain. Above even that. Toward space. There I was. In that mirror. That sky. Those stars. That dark place. There I was. And it made sense. It made me want. And it was. It was. A photograph. A home. A memory made real again. All those smiling faces. A place where people had lights right behind their eyes. Brilliant lights of the city I was leaving. Of cities I had never been to before.

When I woke, the lighted eyes in my dream made me remember another item from my past once forgotten.