Do you love somebody, because if you do, just
tell me, because I want to tell you that I love somebody. We don’t have to talk about who, or when, or
anything about it. I just want to know,
if you,love somebody.
Yes
Do you love each other?
I don’t think so.
Then we rambled about China
some more. Declaring again that singularly
being here just isn’t enough. We told each other that we wanted more. Having caught glimpses of the kind of
stimulation that made our hearts pound at some point or another a long time
ago, we floated around together reflecting on those dreamy moments, as we finished
off a jug of red wine. Satisfied with
the realization that we had joined a study in self exploration at the onset of
our exile, we were now deep into the blazing guts of our sloppily dissected
selves, and our intestines were streaming out onto the floor. With no choice by
to continue until the sun stops rising, we’re bound to this experiment
eternally.
Later we collected our belongings to take a
stroll through the quiet streets of a sleepy Shanghai as
motorcycles occasionally hummed by. The
air was pudding thick, and my shoes started to rub me the wrong way, so I took
them off and let my bare feet feel the cool ground, careful to avoid any little
mucus mines on the brick sidewalk. The
street is flanked in birch trees, the buildings are low, and in the darkness,
the colors are all deep and muted. Up
the road a piece, you could see a solitary street light beaming, and beyond we
could see the next stop light with an occasional car passing in slow motion. We
went over and over all the different aspects of the night and life, and when it
started to rain a little bit we walked closer together. I left the umbrella dangling mysteriously at
my side as the drops increased in their size and frequency, soaking our red
wine marinated bodies in the coolness of a welcome summer rainfall.
Misery overcame me that night.
The next morning we met for breakfast. We ordered the same overpriced buffet instead
of the a la carte choices, and sat together without sharing a single word. Instead we shared deep looking and deep
smiling. With the yellow scrambled eggs
piled in our cheek pockets, we smiled a little wider, and continued our commitment
to silence.
We played a lot of games like that. I’m sure that people, given the chance to
witness it, would find it boring after a while, but we really loved playing
with each other like that. We’d never
run through the terms of the game because usually they’d change mid-stream anyway,
but anyhow, we understood each other most in those moments. At the very least, I felt I was understood
the most during those moments where we bathed
each other in the creation of our dual imagination.....