Somewhere Over the Sun

I came to a realization recently. Not any major epiphany, really. Something I probably already knew, but my brain had never managed to phrase just the right way. 

There are different genres of attractiveness. Many people are perfectly attractive, nice to look at, and can inspire an appreciation for the wonderful things nature can do to a human face. But aside from that basic appreciation, it does not inspire anything else.

The superior kind of attractiveness, though, is found in people like the girl who was trying on shoes at Target today. It is attractiveness- something slightly beyond physical beauty- that demands action. Regardless of whether or not you do, it stays with you all day. It is beauty that haunts you, beauty that causes regret if action is not taken. 

I drove past a balcony the other day that was remarkable for two reasons: first of all, its beauty (it was the kind of balcony that begs for dinner parties, the kind of balcony that turns people into smokers, the kind of balcony that inspires the purchase of comfortable patio furniture, the kind of balcony that makes all kinds of weather seem more moderate), and secondly, its emptiness. 

This made me think of human eyes, and the places they don’t go. Earlier that week, I was on a different balcony, high up in a restaurant overlooking the Las Vegas Valley. Why I was there is a story that’s somewhat related but has already been told, so I’ll make you click the link to read it. As one of the most glorious sunsets I’ve ever seen burned through the sky slowly like a cigar, a couple came out onto the balcony, which had been previously unoccupied save for yours truly. Awesome, I thought to myself, someone else looking to bask. Rather than taking seats and gazing at the sky with me, though, they went on to point out all the landmarks they could spot (the only landmarks Las Vegas has to offer are streets and hotels) and left after five minutes.

“An appreciation of beauty, even if it is sexual beauty, is a great gift.” – Raw Water, Wells Tower

Why are balconies so underused? Why, in this age of fleeting and expensive pleasures, are the most basic ones forgotten? Is the appreciation of beauty just a gift that’s coupled with being a writer? If people are not looking at beauty, where are their eyes going? If most people don’t notice beauty, does seeking it out make me more human or less?

Saturday night, lightning approached the city from the south. It raged beyond the mountains like a war. Was I the only one who drove around in circles watching the sky? There are more of us, I am sure of it. Perhaps, all over the city, people stepped out onto their balconies, or watched from a chair pulled up to the sliding glass door, since even battles seen from afar can be scary. They were parking their cars with the hoods pointed south, leaving the windows rolled down in order to provide the view with a soundtrack. Not many of them, no. But some eyes were seeking out the same things mine were.

The downside to all this is the wanting other eyes to see what you see. It’s in feeling others are missing out, looking at the wrong things. And really, it’s none of my fucking business, is it? If you want to admire the beautiful architecture of The Orleans Hotel and Casino, by all means, stare away. The downside is that sometimes I catch myself thinking that I am right and they are wrong, which feels like it’s true but isn’t really. The downside is that I often look at the sky alone.

But the upside? The upside is that I don’t always watch alone. The beauty of it all? That others’ lack of appreciation does not diminish mine. That despite whatever else may be around, the beauty is there, to be seen or not to be seen, to be enjoyed by those who enjoy it and ignored by everyone else. 

Balconies and sunsets keep each other company when humans don’t. 

For the third year in a row, I’m making it my mission to watch the sun rise and set every day during the extended Labor Day weekend. I don’t think we take the time to bask enough. Just simply sit within sight of something pretty and bask. I have a theory that beauty works like a marinade and sinks into your pores.

Do you realize that the sun rises and sets every day? Of course you do. But you don’t really. Otherwise, you would wake up at 5:45 a.m or take a break from indoors at 7 p.m and just watch the sky for a while. When was the last time you dedicated yourself to such a silly, beautifully recurring event? 

Sleep is often lost in the name of gaining knowledge (or at least rote memorization), of making money, of fun. Is it really that silly to lose sleep in the name of beauty? I don’t think so, and if it is, it’s the right kind of silly. Exactly the kind of example I want to set for my newborn nephew. 

I have an open invitation for writing prompts from readers. Whenever I’ve completed word count goals for book number two, or whenever I simply feel like it, damnit, I’ll sort through them and hopefully entertain you lovely people. Entertain you enough that you’ll be interested in reading my book. Today’s reader prompt: a short piece on a girl you find beautiful/a past love.

Dacey Lawson was a night club person. She felt the beat in the very fiber of her being, and I’d watch her dance beneath the candy-colored night club sky and know that I was faking it. The machine-produced smoke shone cherry red and lemon yellow and green apple green and then all was lost in darkness, an eternal DJ-induced moment that made your muscles scream for the continuation of rhythm, even if you weren’t a nightclub person.

She once asked me why I loved her, Dacey did, and when I couldn’t answer articulately that’s when I knew that, even if I just stood around thinking things while at nightclubs, I was a more primal person than she was. I might not have felt compelled to dance, but I felt love for her, and that was all there was to it, not that she was okay with that. I felt love, but I was good at words, and my inability to think into words the love I felt destroyed her. Although, in my opinion, the ineffability of my love for her strengthened it. Why feel more at night clubs than you do in love? If there was anything in life I didn’t feel the need to think about, it was her.

I thought too much, in her opinion. I’d blend into the most indistinguishable night club corner and watch Dacey dance with men whose chest hair seemed very appreciative of fresh air that it was exposed to. And I’d watch men want to have sex with her, and her just dance, and me far away, somehow loved by someone so different than me, somehow knowing she’d come home with me. I’d be  watching perfectly traced green lasers highlight the motion of flailing limbs, beverages spilled and slipped, actions that seemed to hide all semblance of thought. Thought was the anti-night club- an assault on the primal. Yet it seemed so much more interesting than the skin longing for skin on the dance floor, the unconvincing smiling faces at the bar. While action uncurled itself before me, I thought of invisible, perhaps non-existent inner monologues of nightclub people, writing them out in my mind, overpriced drink in hand.

From my view between her legs, after the nightclubs, I could see her two front teeth, glimpsing out at me from pleasure-parted lips. To climb up from her pelvis with my eyes, trekking past those perfect hip bones and my favorite rib of hers and breasts which need no superlatives and scurrying up the neck I loved to press my lips into, that span of skin in between jawline and collarbone, the place that felt like the safest and most sensual place on the planet, that was primal beauty. But stumbling upon those imperfect front teeth, almost unnoticably coffee-stained, almost ridiculous and unfitting, and to want her even more, that was primal love.

I always bent my knees to the beat, thought about where my hands would go, imitated hand gestures and angled elbows well enough to meet Dacey while dancing. There are plot holes in between me sipping on that last beer, amused by the thoughts that came to me, and then that lip-locked way I met her, but I know I didn’t really feel anything at nightclubs until I felt her. Even all the beautiful women that paraded around, making me think I wanted them, none of them inspired a single feeling in me, not until I felt her hand in mine, that uncoordinated dance of a man who was good at salsa but not blessed by salsa music. She played along, because she didn’t care enough not to. There were times that I wanted to be a nightclub person; that ever-hazy line in between being true to yourself and expanding your comfort zone. Beautiful nightclub women will further haze that line.

The lat time I saw her, Dacey swirled her drink, making it reflect the gradual rainbow of sporadic lights that showed flashes of people trying to touch or not touch each other. She looked deep into the weak whirlpool inside the tall glass and not at me, then tilted the glass to her lips and made the liquid disappear, like a friend within the crowd.

Humans adore to steal glances at each other.

How pleasant is it to just sit near people and look at them? Not even pay close attention to who they may be or the kind of life they’ve lead. Not even to imagine them in your life. Just to be among them, immersed in their obvious humanity. It’s strange how the air feels different around people you haven’t met.

On a different note, there’s a tree on this planet which is my favorite out of all of them.

It stands in the little patch of grass which divides the traffic headed North or South on the beautiful Pacific Highway. Headed North past Monterey and Seaside toward Marina, there’s a bend in the highway which lifts your car past the sand dunes which hide the view of the ocean so close you can feel the spray of waves if you lower your window and brave the Central California chills. At night, you can’t quite tell where the sandy hills end and the ocean begins, but as soon as the bend is over, after the exit for Imjin Parkwy and right before Del Monte,  the tree comes into sight and you forget that where you are is beautiful for its shore.

I don’t know what kind of tree it is, but somehow nameless things always seem more beautiful anyway. It’s tall, and it’s branches reach out to the ocean and the highway, like a leafy child who knows simply holding her arms out will result in a warm hug. And just like the person you most love has a certain light in which she looks most beautiful, my tree looks best in the fog.

She wears fog like a gorgeous evening gown. The universe appropriately planted her in one of the foggiest places in the world; the sky’s so commonly covered in shallow gray that area residents joke that Marina is home to Harry Potter’s dementors. Headlights from oncoming traffic shine beams through her branches and leaves and she turns into a cabaret star, spotlighted and impossible to turn away from.

I wish I had a picture to show you, but since it’s on the highway, I was never able to safely capture its beauty. Instead I’ll give you this picture I took of a great sign very near my tree.

I asked my Twitter followers to tell me about their favorite tree. Some confusion ensued and I got a bunch of responses about kinds of trees, but one follower gave me a great line about his favorite: There was this ancient gum in a forgotten corner of town, in the bush. You could feel the memory hanging off the branches.

What’s your favorite tree?