Cloudy

I tried to imagine where I was, walking alone down back alleys to my home. Many times I had followed these streets, nights after the buses stop or breezy Sunday afternoons. I watched the passing pavement beneath my feet. The alternating grey and red squares of the sidewalk.

The air was damp and heavy from the afternoon rain. It smelled stale and dirty as it always does. It was almost midnight, but the streets were still busy with automobiles and mopeds. Always mopeds. Zooming this way and that. Delivering to someone somewhere something delicious. Through open restaurant doors I saw tables of men dressed in grey business suits laughing and raising another glass of Soju.

I tried to remember when this wasn’t familiar. But I could not think. My mind opaque as the overcast night sky. I found myself walking, just walking. Lulled by the rhythm of my footsteps and the swing and clack of the umbrella striking concrete.

I tried to remember where I had been. A clear and distinct memory of the past. Yet I could not. Everything was hidden behind the clouds.

I tried to imagine myself telling stories. Long entrancing tales of my travels and adventures. The way Gabe did tonight. I watched the Korean teachers sitting around the table at the cafe, $6 lattes in their hands. Their eyes glowing in awe. That peculiar smile of longing on their lips. Hanging on every word he spoke.

Yet when I spoke, I found my voice detached and flat. I quickly bored myself and closed my mouth. Of my childhood I have little to tell, of my travels only memories of smells, of feelings. I could not tell you anything useful. I could not tell you the price of a cup of coffee in Paris, or the best place to shop in London. I don’t remember these things. I remember the streets of Budapest are broken and cracked, I remember the glow of the red light on the ceiling of the closet where I stayed in Dresden, I remember the fear of sitting by a pay phone in Paris at 2 am with no place to go and no one to call, I remember the horrorfying reflection of my face in a bus window in Amsterdam, bloodshot eyes and lifeless lips. I remember these insignificant things, these singular, irreplaceable unbeautiful things. Things that will disappear with me. That will fade and discolor in time. Things that you or your cousin have done better. And could retell better. I remember things that I would not tell you unless you first asked, and that you would not ask of unless first I told you.

So I sat silent, constructing travel brochure images in my head of places I’d never seen, sipping my Vienna latte and smiling as he went on and on.

At the top of the hill I saw the glowing orange and blue lights of my home and as I walked, I decided I would pause and sift through my hazy thoughts of this hazy night on my blog.