Chaos, Connection, and Creative Rebirth

So today, I finished my writing. I wrote from 5 am to 10,11 am every day. Then I dealt with the corporate and bureaucratic hell that is modern living. Endless phone calls and 20 minute hold times. I tried to interject logic among the brain eating zombies. They make up the administrative authority in the “real world.” Only then, lost in Kafka’s chaos, do I start to sympathize. I understand the random shooter who just snaps after 40 minutes on hold. He picks up an automatic weapon (from his local 7-11) and starts shooting. Shooting everyone and anyone who cannot fathom his pain and confusion. It’s days like those. I have utter empathy for the impulse to slaughter. I feel driven to tear the pillars of the temple of society down like Sampson.

But I digress into blood lust and human carnage.

Today to alleviate my stress and my joyful plans to leave this god-forsaken, salted earth scourge of a nation b. Yes, I am leaving. I am leaving the altered united states behind. It is a place with its inhuman consumption. It has sexual pervert puritans. There’s also its dread of the smell of cigarette smoke as if a lingering aroma could kill you.

I was disturbed by a steady stream of texts. They came from a young woman I had attempted to date some 3 weeks previous. I had met Crystal at a local up market Mexican restaurant and casual bar called Pueblo on Cass street. It is nearest to Hornblend cross street. I had occasion to drop in one early afternoon. It was on my way to my regular local crystal shop. At the shop, I had made friends with the proprietor and his son. I stopped in to have a small reposado tequila, my regular self pain management cure for my constantly aching leg.

Pain is a reminder. It is a memory of the agony that afflicts so many of us. We choose to ignore it or at least hide from the eyes of others. We do this lest they think us weak and vulnerable.

I stopped in for a quick tequila and the place was empty.
That is save for the sole waitress/bartendress.
A ravishing brunette beauty with long legs and a yoga body.

Although not pretty in face, she carried herself with a grace and poise that was attractive to the male gaze. She greeted me loudly and with an off guard grin. “Hello” she beamed, “welcome, what can I get you?” I mumbled something about just wanting a stiff drink straight up, of reposado tequila. She smiled flirtatiously. She reached to the highest shelf and let me have a full view of her sex-advertising body as she fetched her recommended choice.

We struck up a rapport. It was just her and me filling the empty bar with our shyly nervous chatter. We weighed up each other’s sex appeal like cattle ranchers at an auction. We drank a few glasses of good tequila together. I paid for the drinks.

Now I’m single. I’m in love with a devout Algerian feminist virgin. She won’t even meet me until her devout mother is dead. An unreachable shore. But I’m also a man. A man is defined by his desires and his ability to acquire the objects of his desires. I have no self illusions. i was once good looking, but I’m past my prime; old and 20 pounds overweight. I am not dating material. But I try.

Mainly for a poverty of feminine companionship. Sex is always on the plate like a batter waiting for the ball at his plate; but it’s not enough. I seek connection and genuine intimacy. I want this with a woman who finds me attractive. Together, we can transgress space and time into the dimension of raw bliss that is sexual congress. If the US congress was an actual sexual congress we would all be much better served.

It’s not easy to be ‘on the scene’ in America and especially California. Sex and emotional intimacy seem to revolve around transactions. It’s about money and how much you are willing to spend. I once accidentally stumbled into a street brothel in Hamburg’s red light district. This happened when I was in my late 20s. The setup was such that you couldn’t leave the entrance without facing a dozen or more scantily dressed women. They just wanted you to take them upstairs.

So I did.
I let a German curly haired, brunette beauty guide me. We went up a flight of stairs to a private bedroom. Only I could not follow her lead in the bedroom. I wanted to talk. I learnt a lot about the young beauty. She was an opera student trying to make ends meet. That she loved Peer Gynt, that she hoped to quit the business in a year that Hamburg was expensive etc. By the end of the conversation, it was time to go. I paid her full marks back then. I shook her hand. She kissed me on the cheek and I walked downstairs. That was and still is my sole experience in paying for female companionship. Frankly, I’m too shy to have sex with a stranger.

But I’m still a man and “Crystal” was certainly aware of the fact. Flirting and gazing closely into my eyes.
I was quick to the point: “hey, do you want to go out sometime, you know just you and me, like on a date”.
“yes”, she answered, I’d go out with you, that would be great” Upon exchanging numbers and making tentative plans for the weekend I exited. “Call me”, I parted with. “of course, Crystal answered.
But she didn’t.
I didn’t have her number, she had mine; in more ways than one.

I didn’t hear back from her and I didn’t return to the bar looking for Crystal, meth or otherwise.

I wrote off the experience as another California fake-off. People who didn’t know what they wanted, who they were or even what common manners were. I never expected to see or hear from Crystal again.
Until this morning, I received a text from the number I was never given. It explained that she hadn’t called me because she decided it wasn’t a good idea for us to “hang out.”

I replied that I had guessed as much when I hadn’t heard from her. Everything was cool with me. I hoped it wouldn’t be awkward if I returned to the Pueblo bar for a drink if she was working a shift.

Then her madness set in.

Instead of responding to my comment, she sent more texts. She told me how uncomfortable I HAD MADE HER FEEL. It was the rantings of a mad woman. I had only asked her out. She accepted, but never followed up.

Today I received six text messages from this stranger. She told me how off putting I was. She said I should never expect a girl to take me seriously if I behaved that way. Behaved? I asked the girl out. She accepted, and then she changed her mind. This is every woman’s prerogative. I finally had to admonish her for making a mountain out of nothing. I reminded her that she had contacted me first. I did not have access to her phone number before. Needless to say, she informed the owner of the establishment about my perceived trespasses. I was no longer welcome at Pueblo.

I was shocked and upset.
I told her to seek therapy. I reminded her that one can’t hold others accountable for one’s feelings. I finally blocked her number.
It was an emotional disaster. Crystal was attractive and appeared to find me attractive. There was a possibility of a friendship, if not an actual physical encounter. Crystal seemed most upset because her ghosting and her rebuff didn’t affect me much. This seemed to make the poor woman angry. I confronted her about her behavior. Doing so didn’t help the situation at all.

I finally blocked her and refused to even read her continuing tirade of abusive text messages.

It was in this state of disturbance that I walked the four blocks to the sea front to gaze at the horizon.

I avoided the verbal abuse of a meth addict who had jumped me unprovoked tow nights previous, after seeing and hearing me talking to his homeless friends on the street corner. (I can see homeless people!)
I warned him off with the threat of calling the police and he followed me a ways cursing and hurling threats at me. I slipped past his attention span and approached the now sun soaked board walk.

AI noticed the presence of a dark skinned young man wearing a starched linen shirt strumming softly on his guitar. I approached but kept my distance. When the young man with the dark shade looked up at me, I reassured him that I just wanted to listen. I badly needed the recluse of a strumming guitar on the tranquilizing sea side. A glimpse at the sun stroked horizon and the reassuring quiet crashing of distant waves. Facing the waves.

He replied that he was no good at the guitar. I replied, “Hey, not all of us can be rock stars.”
He played his guitar and sang a song in a language I did not recognize. Softly, softly with no ego to project. When he paused I asked him which language he was singing in. When he replied that he was singing in Sanscript, an ancient language, I said it was the first time I had heard his language spoken. The young white starched man unfolded that he was a student of Sanskrit, hoping to translate and teach the language as his career.
He then recited to me a poem in Sanskrit.

I was mesmerized and asked him if would consider translating a contemporary text into Sanskript.

he said he would be delighted to as it would be the practice he required to complete his studies for a degree. I recited him a poem, Rumi’s Mirror and he recited it back to me in Sanskrit. i was hypnotised.

Cutting this story short “David” is now prepared to translate my entire book of poetry Facing the Waves into Sanskrit and moreover recite the translated texts for recoding while strumming his guitar.

And that’s exactly what’s going to happen.
Sometimes you can experience heaven and hell in the same day to the same intensity side by side.
Today was a day in heaven and hell in tandem

Here’s David signing his songs in Sanskrit.