The Two Weeks Collection (Part I): Unaligned

Preface:

The following stories are true events about a two week relationship I had during the fall of 2017. Haha. Two weeks. I know. If you think it’s stupid that I got this much out of two weeks, then I agree with you. I don't know why I wrote so much about a person I only knew for literally 14 days, but something about my short-lived time with him inspired me anyway. I knew it wasn't him, it was the idea of him.

Author Elizabeth Gilbert once said that if an idea is meant to be yours, then it picks at you. It picks at you endlessly, shamelessly, ruthlessly. It’s the first thing you think about when you wake and it’s the last thing to plague your mind before you sleep. But this only happens if an idea was meant to be yours. This was meant to be mine.

This story is not about him, or me, or us together. It’s not a story about love, nor is it a story about heartbreak. This is the story about a persistent idea that chose me to be its creator. I am the mother of this art below, and I had a good time making it.

Something in the night told me to write about him. Write about me, write about me, write about me, it said. So I did, and here it is.

· · ·

Unaligned

yours is the light by which my spirit’s born:

yours is the darkness of my soul’s return

–you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars

(e.e cummings)

On our first date he took me stargazing somewhere up on those Santa Barbara mountains. He drove stick, and I liked that he drove stick because it gave his clean image an edge of adventure. As we drove upwards to get closer to the stars the road became more rocky and uneven. There were sudden breaks and times when I’d close my eyes to forget that we were just inches away from a 500 feet drop – but as scared as I was there was something about the way his soft blue eyes focused on the road that made me trust him.

Late October wind snuck past his half-rolled windows just to play with my hair, twisting in new knots and intricately weaving single strands into collective arbitrary tangles. With my hair dancing and him making funny faces of concentration trying to get his truck through rough terrain, I sat back against the passenger seat and took him in. I didn’t know much about him then, only that he was six feet tall of lean muscle from a good family in California who liked the outdoors and Lynyrd Skynyrd. That was all I knew, but I felt as if I’d known him for longer. He looked back at me and smiled. He liked the wild nature of my hair and I liked the rugged nature of him.

We parked on the edge of a semi-hidden bluff that gave way to a panoramic view of both city and sky. Below, concentrated lights twinkled on the busy parts of Santa Barbara and softly dimmed into darkness as it reached quieter areas. Above, billion year old stars freckled the navy sky while the moonlight shone bright enough for me to see his face.

As we lay on the bed of his truck we talked about nothing in particular. Everyday things: family, school, life. Long silences here and there. We were comfortable with that despite not knowing each other for a long time. But when it got colder we got hotter, so behind the sheer veil of the night fog we undressed ourselves under the velvety haze of moonlight.

It was there beneath the glitterings of night where I saw my first shooting star. As a city girl I never saw the sky clearly enough to see one before, but with him beside me I finally did. It blazed through the sky carelessly for a fraction of a moment as if it wanted to kiss the earth. It was like it couldn’t wait any longer. Barely detectable, this faint white light fell from the heavens just so I could catch a glimpse of its withering beauty. It demanded sympathetic attention.

I made a wish and he asked me what I wished for. I told him my wish wouldn’t come true if I did. He said I passed the test.

We listened to Bruce Springsteen as we drove down spiraling mountain roads towards home. The windows were rolled up this time, no wind wildly flowing in and out of my hair. When he walked me home later that night he kissed me outside my front porch. Before I went to sleep all I could think about was how perfect he was.

A couple days later we agreed on taking a night walk. Again we sat underneath the stars, only this time the Pacific Ocean stretched out before us like a vast expanse of uncertainty. No twinkling city lights in the distance, no moon. Only varying shades of dark blue. The stars were there again, as they always are, but they looked still and static as if they were tired of entertaining lovers under the moon.

The waves sounded like the gentle inhales and exhales of earth, heaving and easing as they reached then receded from the shore’s pebbled surface. This sound – which reminded me of both patience and impatience – faded in and out during our conversation. Again, we talked about nothing in particular.

When it got cold we rose from the concrete bench we sat on next to the cliff in silence. As we walked home, the sound of our shoes digging into the gravel was louder than the sound of the waves, the crickets, the owls. Our silence became louder than the sound of night. That was when I knew.

In all our perfection I knew something was off. It was a deep gut feeling – a feeling you get when you know you’re not supposed to be somewhere. No matter how perfect he was or I was or the night was it just didn’t feel right. He felt it too. There’s a difference between perfect and right, and in all our perfection and rightness we both knew we weren’t meant to be with each other. He was too much head and I was too much heart. He was too much of over here and I was too much of over there. We were two palms on the opposite side of the same pane of glass. We were next to each other but light years away. We were unaligned planets within the same solar system, galaxy, universe.

· · ·

In another world I am with you and you are with me. Together we look up at a different sky.

Midnight through high noon. Time doesn’t exist here. Just us two.

And nothing else but the sun, the moon, and all the stars.