The Love Song of R. Anica Dewdrop

Castles.

Whenever I start wondering about my future life—in which part of the world will I end up? what will my home [i]  look like?— I think about car commercials.

Here’s how. First: Start wondering about where you’ll move to. I can move anywhere at this point in my life. Do anything.  But, where? Australia? Canada? The jungle? Then the next obvious question is: what will my commute look like when I get there?

The commute is everything. I like freeways that have old bridges:

Or, newer ones:

Or, none at all:

Let’s take it up a notch. This is what my brain does next:

So, anyway, like I was saying. Freeways and cars. I was telling Hömey[ii] about how much I love freeways and highways. My friend, Hömey, is from Germany. He said he couldn’t relate to what I was saying, because in Germany nobody likes to remember any of about how the Autobahn came to be inaugurated.

This same friend made me dinner recently. This is important to the story because the dinner setting (his place of work) is in Topanga Canyon. We hopped in his car one certain Friday night and traced up the Pacific Coast Highway—maybe, there, to allow me into a little bit of his daily life making music; definitely, to cook up some truffles. Mainly, for to be awesome.

But I wasn’t quite sure what to expect as we made the leisurely, moonlit crawl up the PCH to the side of a Santa Monica mountain. I was worried about how tired I was[iii]. Also, it felt like I was getting sick. And I wanted to be alert and charming, but I was feeling flutterbys (yep) and my throat now looked swollen, and where the hell was this place?  

We made small talk until we finally passed the Palisades into Malibu, and turned east onto a winding road. The water to the west was navy and white with moon. In front of us, charcoal silhouettes of leaves on trees swaying, the way things sway in January. That’s when Hömey put in a CD, turned to me, and, in his soft accent that kind of reminds me of Baryshnikov, said: Ennio Morricone.

The rest of the drive was kind of like a car commercial, with the sound of the engine becoming gradually the only sound under the music. It felt better, not caring where the night would be going, and it no longer mattered whether I would succeed in pretending like I was NOT ready to faint. When we got there, he started the meal and showed me around. He showed me the back, to the ocean view, where it was so quiet I could hear the very drunk neighbor shout into his phone in his backyard over on the next hill. The lower level had all the instruments and recording equipment. When we were ready to eat, we sat on the couch and talked until we (I) couldn’t keep our (my) eyes open any more.

That night, I ended up developing a fever after all, and Hömey held me until my fever broke at around 4 am. I lay there, drifting in and out, between sleep and amazement that so much could change in such a short period of time. I didn’t even know if I had a place to call home. I was commuting all over the place. When the first hum of the sunrise began, we picked ourselves up and got back into his car. Watching the sun break over the horizon, with the water in my periphery, on the right this time, had me thinking about this tendency I have to think about my life in images and music, and how if anything, I am not completely, for once, wrong in this idea of the future being about the journey and not the destination.

A man’s home might be his castle, but a girl’s story is the commute there.[iv]

[i] Looking back on my posts, I have to admit I spend a lot of time thinking about real-estate.

[ii] Short for hӧmeboy. Previously referred to, in this supposedtobemicro-blog, as c.vorlaender. This moniker is no longer functional.

[iii] I had slept one sole hour in the previous 38 hours and counting. Drastic life changes and poetry breakthroughs and Red Bull: FTW.

[iv] This feels like an ending. Night.