Angst

Through the illustrious beats and chirps of the mechanical secretaries and messengers, Sonja James, could still feel the immense heat of the April sun. It was if the festive rivers of colors, shapes and sizes of the forms of people enveloping her in a perfumed tent of vibrancy, did not exist above the analytical melodies of the hand held electronics hidden in pockets, clipped to belts or simply lost and forgotten in the deep grass bordering the turquoise water. This is the sort of havoc the quest for true love caused to a person’s mind and stale heart.

But, it was always April, the Spring gusts of pollen and wine watering the eyes and jostling the taste buds out of an icy winter hibernation. The migration of her inner self had lead her to the coast of Monterrey and the pillars of the ocean waves and the pillars of kelp under the shark infested expansive waters of the Pacific. Through the sea of the crowds and basking tourists on the fog less day, she longed for comfortable chair and a Corona, the sweet and sour of the lemon spray beckoning the depths of the past to dance and float in the coastal breeze.


“What a pretty lady,” the clipped English invaded her ears as she felt the eyes of a group of young men taking pleasure in her fleeting appearance. Inwardly, she smiled as she continued down the boardwalk and tried to detach herself from her work and her life and enjoy the rarity of the vacation. However, the regal lips remained in a state of focus and indifference.


As she passed into the patio of the bar, she felt her purse vibrate and removed her I-phone to see who was attempting to contact her. In the age of constant gossip on the illusion of the global village in first world countries one was never alone. Again all around her, the bells, whistles and electronics shrieks pleaded for the owner’s attention, as the read the email on the small display screen. “Dear Sonja, what are the dems up to now?” The note included a link to an article in the Washington Post and she recognized the sender as her longtime writing partner and somewhat mentor, Jon Locking.


“Ah,” she audibly sighed as looked for an empty umbrella table in the patio.


In the world there was absolutely no means of true escape because of the brilliant dichotomy of portable communications devices coupled with a succinct addiction to being connected. It was absolutely unacceptable to miss any new information or thus feel the guilt and anguish of true disconnect and an unacceptable solitude.


She sat in the patio umbrella and as a majority of yuppies dominated the clean white sidewalk of the boardwalk. Amidst a seasonal rush of pounding feet, wheelchairs and baby carriages, everything remained pristine. The mass of those with disposable income and a floundering presence outside the confines of their 25 mile bubble shined brilliantly in the sunlight. Their ignorant confidence emphasized by the trip meticulous planning in front of the computer on a weekday evening. The use of credit cards and a solid itinerary for the journey to the coast almost as an act for evoking a translucent ability to function as an archaic being.


As she sipped her beer she pondered the way of the world and thought to the vast freeways, the speeding cars impersonal and robotic. The humanity of the inhabitants of the vehicles becoming relative only by a chance meeting at a full stop or in the case of a fender bender. She applied the same treatment to the holiday crowds as the intoxication combined with the rattling of baseball scores and highlights on the bar's televisions from a familiar ESPN announcer flooded the back of her mind.


She sat, staring at middle age through the glasses of a beautifully tall and gracious stance of womanhood. Her blonde hair, highlighted by the sun’s orb of fire could not hide the irrevocable fact of the dissipating years, as the friendly tourists acknowledged her presence with careful nods by the men and the glance of approval from the wives. It occurred in this cylinder of social engineering, tempered by the breeze from the ocean and the pure basking acceptance of living in modern times, that friends and acquaintances were always near. She momentarily blocked out the drone of the performance from the sportscaster to conjure the pageantry of the past and the early 20th century, where ceremony and destiny dominated the very essence of the marathon like celebration of the summer. She thought of the days and nights of simple travel and detachment aboard a tramp steamer across the Atlantic or the rhythmic click and clack aboard the transcontinental railroads, with the mountains gradually painted towards the ceiling of the sky on the canvas of the horizon. The destination was the celebration, as with a relativistic jaunt across the universe once one established contact with solid ground and the concept of there, the tide of reality would eventually roll in during that first night. Up until then, those few precious hours flowed with a mysticism so refined and levitated the person to an existence of dreams, their conscious truly free as they reluctantly awaited the arrival of the real baggage. And now in this hollow future, with the new millennium collecting a pedestrian dust, the rockets did not blare to the moon on a daily schedule, while the planets of the solar system rotated silent and lonely, their orbits observed with care and dreams from the brave few who inhabited the International Space Station hovering gracefully over humanity’s cradle.


“Sonja?” a voice possessing an almost decedent amount of songbird tones with a hint of surprised laughter snapped her attention back to the present.


A couple stood outside the border of her territory near the edge of the boardwalk, the woman in the white hat and sunglasses anxiously waiting for an acknowledgement and the man tall and dark smiling at her pleasantly with an amazing intensity in his eye contact.


“Hey guys,” she projected with excited laughter, “Would you like to join me for a drink.”


It was as if the empty kitchen table save for the piece of bread, was now filled with a healthy banquet of culinary delights. Diana and Bob Kinnig were old friends of hers and recently married. They simply melded into the movements and shapes of the boardwalk.


“This is a pleasant surprise,” she remarked with a beaming smile as the couple settled in at the table. She was taken aback by their appearance, but ecstatic in their presence.


“Bob had some vacation time, my schedule was open and we just decided to wing it,” exclaimed the woman in justifying their appearance.


“Where are you guys staying?”


“Up at my brother’s house in Carmel. He and his family are on sabbatical in Australia and it gives me a chance to show Diana around.” Bob Kinnig spoke for the first time, his voice perceptibly deep, but calm.


She suppressed a comment expounding the virtues of the difficulties of life flooded in innuendo. “I found this amazing little bed and breakfast just outside of downtown.”


“Yeah, and you still figure out a way to wake up before six am,” retorted the woman with a laugh.


“Yeah Diana, and how I far have I gone in my career?” The stinging sarcasm sent with the cruel intent of the snap of a rubber band on bare skin. “You two should get a drink.”


The pangs of jealousy and injustice did not settle in until she got back to her room and slept for three hours. Even though she adored her closest friend and husband as family, what fundamental flaw had kept her alone in the prime of life she had forged in the presence of self indulged labor and endless work. She was 37 years old and the epitome of a solitary individual living under the false pretense of a veil of friends, their faces recycled every few years, depending on her needs. This equation of sophism did not go hidden under the karmic values of life and the very thought of dodging a calculated and necessary retaliation kept her forehead wet some nights with a burning sheen of sweat.


The reality of the morning saturated her very being in the most subtle process of osmosis. It was if the fabric softener freshness of the viable ventricles of happiness flowed into the flawed and pained interior of her heart, stagnant with the weight of her world. She took a deep breath, the air scented with a combination of shampoo and suntan lotion, and verifying that she was truly a faraway from the temperate evergreen rain forest of home somewhere to the North. The blatant display of morning sunlight on some primal level caused her a bout of annoyance and she made the slow pilgrimage to the deck adjacent the room for a morning cigarette.


Endless as a parade of carpenter ants, the tourists were out in droves, the laughter for the sunshine, the cries of babies and the gentle conversations between lovers coalescing into a singular drone and almost synced perfectly with the blue and brown drapes of the shore, extending as far as the eye could see to the North and South. She allowed her imagination the luxury to propagate and explore the obviously pleasant nature of the surrounding environment. She remembered reading a J.D. Salinger short story about an Indian mystic reincarnated as a nine-year old boy in the height of the post-war world. Teddy, as the title and the name of the main character explained in depth his epiphany with spiritual enlightenment. The whole scene for the story was set on a cruise ship where vacation norms dominated, not unlike the festive fabric of the tapestry she was woven into. As Teddy had profoundly embraced the very makeup of the universe as god, and each and every fabric of reality god, she saw only love on this morning. Each and every vibrant material of the surrounding movement and still reality was forged with the imagination of a pristine kiss of a pure love akin to joy.


She took another drag from her cigarette as the ache of a tear tickled the dome of her cheek. Who in the throng of strangers would be able to understand me? The ticking of the symbolic clock came to an almost audible level outside of her being. She was engaged in an infinitesimal search and only her subconscious realized the true ramifications as her heart remained thwarted by the extremes of pure ambition and at the same time a quest for profound love.


At this moment a flurry of spiritual relativism and clairvoyance failed to materialize, but instead she thought about her father. She kept a picture of him hidden amongst her collection of encyclopedias and favorite novels and her bookshelf at home. The photo was taken before she and her brother were conceived. The man in the photograph possessed a look of joy, zest and a true love for life, a look that she had never witnessed as a child. She held onto the photograph as a evidence and a reminder to the reality of one of the harsh lessons learned early in life. He never loved us, she thought. She had not spoken to her father in over a decade, or more importantly he had not spoken to her.


Though the early sun glared upon the paradise next to the sea with a lavender like warmth, the tundra within her being remained rigid with ice and gloom. In a world and life flowing like a dream, she wondered if one day she would awaken to a differing reality or maybe an eternal nothingness. Sonja, stop, stop, her thoughts pleaded.


Her career flourishing and financial prospects firmly in hand, beautiful and intelligent, she shed the needless shackles from the past and looked out upon the ocean towards the future. I am a fighter, she thought. I did not quit when I was a girl and I will not quit now. Far off in the distance over the empty waves and blustery winds she could faintly see a trapdoor opening in pale blue heights of the sky. She smiled brightly as a yellow light pooled from the opening, the past forgotten for now, 20,000 feet above the ocean.