In Media Res
My dry cleaner is going on vacation. I returned a milk bottle for a three dollar deposit. I grinded coffee beans. It was not even noon on a Monday.
On Tuesday I asked William what ‘in media res’ means. It is Latin for in the middle of things. Faulkner said something once about how the world is only alive when it is in motion. I suppose the same point applies to life. Life, the act of it when considered something closer to that of an object in motion, has to be lived in order for it to be true.
It was on a walk home from work, down Divisadero, when I saw the woman sitting at Popeye’s reading a book on Lima, Peru. Of all the things you could be reading while eating fried chicken, a book on Lima, Peru does not rise to top of mind.
The following day I was walking to work, this time going up Divisadero. The sky stood straight with a cloudless bright blue block posture. Something was adding a certain edge to the air. It could have been the prominent autumn light or it could have been the fact that I wished my destination was elsewhere. There is a song I like that has the lyric, “Inside me five girls shout in Italian wanting life to be one long vacation.” I am not quite sure what I am looking forward to because I have dreams of people standing outside of my window wanting to come into my house and other dreams about bears in backyards that have inground pools.
The other night I was at dinner and apologized for answering a question about myself because it became long winded and I am not sure how to explain myself to someone who is buying me dinner. Later that night, with the same company I went on about my qualms with a journalist’s depictions of two women writers. The following morning I spoke with a gold miner and his daughter. The daughter asked me what I want to do. I want to do a lot of things. I want to cook dinner for good company. I want the luxury of time. I want more ballet flats. I want to make things that matter to other people. I want to stop making the same long goodbye–It is always bittersweet and oxymoronic and because of it I keep keepsakes for the sake of maybe sometime again, but I really do not know when or ever. Maybe one day I will want to go to Popeye’s alone and bring a book with me. And that book will be about Lima, Peru or a close cousin of the place. Maybe someone will walk by and see me reading about a faraway place or maybe not.
Before William translated a dead language phrase to me, someone told me they were not feeling it. The it in question is something I maybe have met before, some other time that belongs to the past. A week before this even, a person came up to me at a bar and handed me a fortune. They said something about how they source the good fortunes from people they know in North Beach. My fortune included the word right five times and the word contrary four times. My lucky numbers are 27, 5, 28, 18, 6, 30. I turn 27 in two years. I was 5 twenty years ago. I will be 28 in three years. I was 18 years old at some point. When I was 6 I had chin length hair. Someday maybe I will turn 30 years old. In the meantime I guess I will be in the middle of things; in the back of a restaurant, crossing the street, parking my car, returning phone calls, cancelling dates, forgetting people’s names as soon as I meet them, saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, sleeping too little, worrying too much, and getting distracted.
