APIS6

Flash forward with me, back to the closer-to-now rather than the pleasant summer dream time of evenings past with a beautiful woman who would habitually alternatively either call me Tex, Cutie or by my given name.
It—she—was a reality that was defined by the lightness of being and happiness of the soul. She was a warm ray of sunlight, a vibrant flower bloom, a brilliant sunset in the ocean-sky as the sun leaves the day behind on a warm summer beach. She was the green flash; all elusive but enthralling while briefly experienced. It was short lived period in my life. Way too short, and while it had profound impact and the ripples in the pond that it started have yet to fully spread from shore to shore, I nonetheless cannot linger too much there lest the emotions overwhelm my defenses and the tempestuous waves of horrific cataclysm set the gunwales of my meager defenses awash. I nearly foundered last time, and it’s my hope to serve Her memory by being brave and strong and able to cope with all things living having taken to heart the lessons that she so lovingly and selflessly imparted on me during our existence together.
Yeah, whatever. Something the fuck like that. Wine is fine, liquor might be quicker, but a bullet to the forehead stops the pain permanently.
I’ve thought about it, believe me I have.
Regardless, I cannot stay there. I’ve said that; I’m repeating. I know the all-too-familiar sound of my mantra of these past months. It’s a survival issue, you see.
Thus, we find ourselves somewhere else, although still in San Diego. It’s closer to now, farther from then. I’m back at work, slowly rebuilding. I’m racing again, and training, and seeking the solace of endorphins and the emancipation of pain. Am I really living? I doubted it then as much as I do now, but it was a start, and all things must begin somewhere, even the Rebuilding Aftewards.
Beth would have wanted that.
So, I buy new running shoes and take intricate care of my bike. I run, swim, bike, lift, and, most importantly, consciously remember to breathe in each moment of every day. Baby steps and shit.

I am on my bike. I am in the water. My soul might have been drowning, but my cognitive abilities remain acutely aware of everything around me, as if in my death throws I was granted preternatural omnipresence and clarity. Here are my thoughts from that time.

The edges of the map of the human condition are, unfortunately, marked with a simple, ominous warning:

Here there be idiots.

Tragically, there are many, so many of us who fall prey to that bitter, cynical law, and I’ve been no exception. Efforts to the contrary be damned, I find that my behavior has often been less than what is expected of me by nature, by my friends and by myself. One can easily play the nobility of loss such that you ostensibly become the better person, forged anew in the crucible of agony. It’s never quite so romantic, however, and time, if anything, serves only to remind us that we are a faulted critter indeed. It’s a sad, sad testament to the frailty of humanity that the weaknesses of the soul that can spread like cracks in a windshield. I discovered how stark things can be on this day even if the storm had already passed.
It was Thursday and Memorial Day Weekend was fast approaching. I decided to start it a wee bit early since I still wasn’t back on the flight schedule per the Flight Surgeon’s suggestion to my Commanding Officer, my CO. I couldn’t blame Fist, the doc, really, since he was charged with the heavy task to being both doctor and psychologist to our squadron. If he said I wasn’t ready to strap-on an airplane, then he was most likely right. After all, it wasn’t just my ass and a $20 million aircraft if my distraction caused me to put it in the water, since my heart-sick distraction would also take three other people to the bottom. Major trauma equates to no flying.
What else is an aviator to do? Play hooky, that’s what. So I thought to strap on my bicycle in stead. The race season was in its infancy for the year and the events of the past year had left me bedraggled, beleaguered and bereft of the fitness—emotional and physical—that I was accustomed to. I had lofty goals that included at the very least my first Ironman and an Eastern Sierra summit or two.

Mere survival? Notsomuch.
I took advantage of the leeway offered me by the CO and afforded me by my band of brothers and sisters; my squadron. I took a personal day, slept in, showered lazily and savored a bagel and a steaming mug of the sacred juice before donning my Coolmax and Spandex. It was warm and sunny—a grand day indeed to spin the gears and knock the dust off my bike, my quads and my rattled sense of reality alike.
I headed out of Ocean Beach along Sunset Cliffs Boulevard, across the San Diego River bridge, pausing only briefly to look at the fog swirling like a gray, opaque wall not even 500 feet from me, threatening to engulf my corporal presence in the same cold, wet funk that pervaded my soul.

“No, don’t linger here,” I thought. “Keep charging ahead. It’s the only way through.”

Typical aviator’s stubborn resolve. I blazed through the traffic, pumping and spinning, turned right onto Ingraham Drive and started around Mission Bay towards Fiesta Island, into the bright sun light.
Here it was warm for a change and the air pollution courtesy of Los Angeles was casting a strangely alluring hue over the city, whose downtown was plainly visible to the immediate south and towards the ocean too, which lay to the west of the bay. In short, it was a perfect day for ditching work, ditching the burden of Everything Else, and for seeking the solace of a Softride Powerwing 650 triathlon bike in resplendent banana yellow. I felt noticeably lighter until, that is, I turned onto Fiesta Island—a man-made garbage heap turned overnight beach bonfire spot in the middle of Mission Bay—and cruised along the rough pavement to the second hidden cove beyond the screaming of the seagulls and the screaming of the Jet Skis alike.
I noticed as I rode along that people with recreational vehicles and campers and station wagons were beginning to stake out and claim portions of the shoreline in preparation for the coming long weekend. Fiesta Island allows bonfires and overnight camping. In fact, the entrance road closes at sunset, sequestering the campers and rabble-rousers who take keen advantage of that fact and turn the Island into a festive albeit debaucherous testament to pagan drinking and screwing rituals that somehow have grown to accompany America’s holiday in supposed tribute to its fallen heroes.

Some things are best not understood fully, you know.

Families were gathering with cars, personal watercraft, tents, food, and music every 50 yards or so. What caught my attention, however, was a single car parked inconspicuously between two widely spaced family tribal units. As I rode by, I noticed the car’s apparent owner: a very large woman, sitting on a beach towel in the sand beside the car’s open door. She was sitting Indian style with a hunched back and a down-turned head, and every so often she would languidly throw a dog toy of some sort into the water for her chocolate lab to fetch. What really struck me in the brief instant was the combination of her posture, indicative of utter defeat, combined with her gaze, which was pointed about a thousand yards beyond her feet, through the sand and deep into the earth. She was extremely obese, so much so that health problems were a “when” rather than an “if,” but the most striking and halting aspect of the scene before me was the look of profound sadness and loneliness on her face.

She was fat. It was Memorial Day Weekend. She was alone—most likely again.

And that’s what got me. Out of the sun and back to the darkness.
Her dog didn’t seem to mind so much, though, as dogs never judge based on looks, further proof that they are in fact a far nobler species than we. It charged repeatedly into the water, retrieved the fetch toy, and returned it to her with a wagging tail, an ear-to-floppy-ear grin and plenty of gratuitous licking and furious body wiggling. It was happy yet she still sat there staring through her feet and the sand into the depths of inner space.

She was fat. It was Memorial Day Weekend. She was alone—most definitely again.

Mind you, I noticed this in a rather short space of time as I approached, slowed briefly and rode by. Time compression, the phenomena is called. Still, somehow I managed to take it all in, perhaps thanks to my heightened senses at the time. I don’t know. Several hundred yards later I slowed, stopped and straddled my bike while I thought about what I had just seen as several things occurred to me. I shivered in the cold of my heart.

First, in spite of all of the injustices and prejudices that still exist in this land, I think that none are as simply mean spirited as our institutional ostracizing of the obese. Nothing is worse in our fluffy, silicon and collagen implanted society than being fat, except being fat in SoCal where the fluffy silicon and collagen implanted live in droves, gorging themselves upon the utter shallowness of pop culture and nearly impossible unnatural standards of so-called physical beauty.

(My Beth was beautiful—stunningly so in every neo-classic sense of physical standards. And it was all natural, all her. But it was that which defined the facets of her inner diamond that showed the true fire within that shone so brightly in her. It’d be romantic indeed to presume that so many of the glam pop-culture elite of the LA Basin would have stood in awe of such light, but that ultimately gives those fuckers far too much credit wherein self and situational awareness are concerned. Fools, all of them.)

Second, I came to the clear conclusion that we as a nation are the loneliest people on the planet, a strange paradox given our undisputed lead in instantaneous communications technologies and voluminous information exchange.

Combine the two, I rationed, and life—those of others and not just mine—must be pretty bleak in spite of our best efforts to convince ourselves of otherwise. We construct vast walls and chasms to separate us from each other emotionally and intellectually, and then we develop artificial means to re-establish communications provided, of course, that those communications are conducted only at our convenience and only to our liking. I stared at her a little bit longer and then sped away on my bike, intent on putting the scene behind me that I might get on with my day and not be overwhelmed by the vast consequences of my realization. More darkness I most certainly did not need, I figured.

“No, don’t linger here. Keep charging through. It’s the only way to survive.” But the thought persisted, punctuated only by the dragon’s growl deep within.

Hollow. And empty. I stopped again.

My thoughts returned to her and to even more self-recriminations as if that was possible at the time. My chest was heaving but it wasn’t due to oxygen debt. I personified the nation’s problems, and I knew it.

We (I) are alone among a sea of people.

Herein lay the rub. While this may seem an esoteric, obtuse argument to champion, I was seeing it every day in every facet of my life, particularly given my heightened sense of societal loneliness. How quaint. Lost within, I still retained the ability to note that society was lost without. Irony is a bitch.

It’s not that we, America, lack the basic resources to be involved, active, and satisfied by our interactions with those around us. On the contrary, like I’ve already mentioned, we have perhaps the most well developed tools at our disposal than any other culture on earth. Digital wireless technology. Satellite communications. Pagers. Personal Digital Assistants. Email. Voicemail. Snailmail. Bit-streaming music and pornography over the office local area network. Ours is a culture rich in the basic resources and necessities of communications, much less the advanced aspects that only the richest, most powerful nation of earth can have. So why then do we use those devices to shut ourselves out and off from the world and, more importantly, the people around us?

It’s a paradox of advancement, I suppose. Then again maybe we’re all just pricks. I wasn’t sure, and my chest was heaving harder and my eyes were stinging. I could still faintly see her in the distance.

Need proof about our isolation? I had been recognizing the symptoms of our shared selective isolationism as each day passed. As I sat in my car and burned dead dinosaurs in tribute to CalTrans and the ever-present quest for more lanes, I took the time to take stock of my surroundings. I looked around at the people in the other cars, and bear in mind that is not a task to be taken lightly since seemingly innocent eye contact on Interstate 5 can easily be a prelude to violence. Nevertheless, I bravely looked around at the other people and I noticed that without fail everybody was either talking on a cell phone pretending to be interested to the disembodied voice on the other end of the line; or they were staring blankly into inner space, unaware of and disenfranchised from their surroundings. Of course, there were always a small number who would make better use of their time, digging fingers deeply into their noses in quest of mucoid treasures (I never understood the curiosity that drove them to look at the treasures they recovered), but I tended to discount them since they were the people no doubt listening to Billy Ray Cyrus on the car radio and watching Jerry Springer on the idiot box at home.
The selective isolationism, I figured, didn’t end when they got out of their cars either. How many people were walking from the parking lot, cell phone strapped to one ear or PDA firmly grasped in hand? No eye contact with passers-by. No “hellos” or “good days” for anyone. It was as if we sought and/or created technologies that delivered us from the need to interact with society at large. Meanwhile, we steadily retreated/retreat into a land of cyber-reality where we could effectively shut out the real world and interpersonal interaction in favor of introversion, down cast eyes, and isolation from one another.

Now, lest you misunderstand, I wasn’t advocating the abandonment of technology. I harbored no intentions of moving to a powerless cabin in Montana, nor did I own large amounts of ammonium nitrate and blasting caps. I freely admit that I enjoyed web surfing yet I still enjoyed the sublime barbarism of reading a book (gasp!). I owned a cell phone which, incidentally also had games on it that were ideal for playing while on the crapper. Some people read whilst taking a shit; I play Tetras.

But that is more than you need to know.

The point of my observation was that our quantum advancements in technology have only made it that much more critical to seek out and foster communications with the outside world. I feared that humanity was in grave danger of becoming Bill Gates’ Boys From Brazil—shut indoors, strapped to our DSL-equipped computers with no physical links to the outside world save opening the front door for our on-line orders from HomeGrocer.com, Housecalls.com, OnlinePlumber.com, Hookersonthenet.com, etc….. We should not allow these tools of the modern age to supplant our basic human needs to talk to those of the same species—in person. We have to interact with people and, yes, we have to look up and say hello. Unfortunately it seemed that we were doing that less and less, and in my despair I feared that humanity was terminally ill with morasmus, dying due to profound sadness.

Anyhow, I slowed my breathing and got things under control. It was a scene that I was becoming accustomed to repeating throughout the day when little things—a smell, a sound, a thought or memory—would open the door and the dragon would escape. I thought back to the lady faintly still in sight behind me. Should one be audacious and brash enough, I figured, to be overweight or suffer from some sort of physical malady or difference, than the world surely becomes a much smaller and lonelier place. What a sad, sad testament to human advancement. My father had always been an avid science fiction fan and was an ardent believer in the utopian perfection of the world of Star Trek, where there was no war, no hunger, no unhappiness. At that moment, I knew better. Our future was not Star Trek, it was Blade Runner.

Three weeks came and went. Summer took over from spring. I began flying again, finally cleared but still under the close scrutiny of other senior pilots. I wasn’t getting much better, but I was becoming quite adept at hiding the grief, the rage and the shock. People lauded me for getting on with life. They didn’t know that my Friday nights were spent sitting beside a gravestone at Forest Lawn in Arcadia, 100 miles north, talking with a ghost.

But my days were spent coping or at least pretending to. And, I even managed to ride my bike, run my shoes worn-through and swim countless laps across the La Jolla Cove. Thus, on an otherwise un-noteworthy Saturday afternoon I hopped on my resplendent banana yellow bike again and rode to Fiesta Island, opting for a shorter sprint workout rather than my usual leisurely spin up the coast. The island was deserted, and I enjoyed pushing big gears in my aero bars, savoring the burning in my quads and my lungs, lost within like the rest of our pathetic society. How utterly fucking quaint.

I rounded the corner to the hidden cove on the east side and there she was again. It suddenly flooded back. The dragon was loose and reeking havoc in an instant. I wobbled, momentarily lost my balance, caught my front wheel in the sand beside the asphalt and tumbled over my bars into the sand.

I lay there dazed momentarily until I realized that I was okay and not simply awaiting the onset of the pain associated with broken bones or dislocated joints. I sat up, and I looked at her. She was there again, but she was up and moving, playing with her dog and showing a hint of a smile. Did she steal a glance in my direction? No, she kept playing fetch with the lab. Or did she?

At first, I thought she was happier because it wasn’t a holiday weekend and there were no visceral reminders of her aloneness. Yes, I figured, that might have something to do with it. But there was also something else, namely that the dog didn’t give a shit. He romped to and fro, tail wagging and tongue hanging out. He was having fun with the human he loved, and he loved her because she was his human, his pack mate and his companion. He loved her regardless of her physical limitations and he didn’t require her to log onto an instant messenger to make contact. His contact was a stick, the bay and a furiously wagging tail. She smiled back, no mistaking the facial expression. He—the dog—was her link to life. “Hello, how are you” she was saying in her soul, courtesy of real interaction and not via the filters of technology, facades and/or defense mechanisms.

I stared dumbly, sitting in the sand having just taken what should have been a horridly painful bicycle accident. Sometimes pain can be mitigated by experience.

I once read a book by Dean Koontz where he postulated through the eyes of his main character that dog rather than man was surely made in God’s image. It suddenly seemed pretty damned close to the truth. And then the dog ran up to me, the goofy, damaged-goods sitting in the sand with a busted helmet, skinned knees and elbows, and the dumbfounded look on his face. He sniffed only for a moment, judged me no threat and ran over to coat my skinned knees with gentle licks.

“Ohmygosh,” she said as she puffed up a moment later. “You’re a bloody mess. Are you okay?”

I kept staring at the dog, and then I looked up. Hello. How are you? “Uh, yeah, I think I’m fine; just caught my wheel in the sand and endo-ed. Thanks.”

“Well, you don’t look fine, Silly. Does it hurt? I’ve got a first aid kit in my trunk. Why don’t you wait here a minute while I get some Bactine.”

I couldn’t answer because she shuffled off to her car. The dog stayed by me, licking, whining just a bit and wagging like only a lab can do. I scratched him between his chocolate ears. And then the stinging commenced.

She returned. “Here, let me help you.” And she did. Bactine, by the way, hurts, whether you’re a kid or an adult; it’s just that adult sensibilities allow one to appreciate the latter ramifications of staff infections. I only winced a tiny bit.

“You’re very kind.”

“Chester likes you.” She motioned towards the lab that was grinning and creating a half a sand angel with his tail. “That’s a good sign of character, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have noticed you.”

“He’s got good taste in bloody bikers then.” I giggled just a bit.

“Sorry, uhm, does it hurt much?” She was using some gauze to clean off the excess Bactine, blood and sand from my right knee.

“Only when I breathe.” I smiled back. Hello. How are you? Me? Yes, I’m fine. “You’re awfully cavalier for a guy who just face planted into the sand, you know. My name is Callie, by the way.”

“Hi Callie, mother of Chester, I’m Josh. I’m bleeding.”

“Yup, you sure are. Hold this gauze on your knee. Do you do this often?”

“Bleed? Well, I try not to, but I find it a good way to meet new dogs.” Chester, being a typically intelligent lab, wagged even harder (as if that was possible) and licked me in the face.

“Well, Josh, you seem like you’ll be okay. Can I give you a ride home or anything?” She was nice and her voice, it sounded like…. No.

“Uuhmmm, no thanks, Callie. As long as my bike is okay I’ll limp my way home. I only live down in Ocean Beach.”

“OB? That’s five miles away, Silly Josh. Throw the bike in the trunk and you, me and Chester will go for a ride.” Silly Josh was a jolt to the heart that she must have recognized given her stiffening posture and immediate unease. I thought to disarm the situation and set her at ease, but bleeding more wasn’t the appropriate response. I accepted Callie’s gracious offer.

“Well, okay. Thanks.”

And with that, I staggered to my feet and picked up my mangled bike. A quick shake of excess sand and I followed Callie to her car. Chester stayed between us, eyeing my not-so-resplendent banana yellow bike with doggie suspicion. Surely, he figured, this was the thing that hurt Momma’s new friend. That can’t be good in a dog’s sensibilities.

We loaded the bike into the trunk of the sport ute and she drove me off Fiesta Island, towards home. During that brief ride Callie and I spoke and laughed and shared a stolen bit of human interaction. It was disarming and, well, nice. She was, it turned out, an attorney working for a local biotech firm. She had lived in San Diego since graduation from law school and Chester was her family. They lived in North Pacific Beach, up the hill towards La Jolla, in a house that she purchased with stock options.

She learned a little bit of me. Mostly I sat and listened and bled a bit and flapped my arms a bit from the stinging. Chester barked at passing cars. We pulled up to my bungalow.

“722 Naranganset?” She said. “This is a familiar address.”

I paused. She couldn’t have known Beth. God, I hoped not, as the color drained from the day.

“Isn’t this where that gal who worked at Immunogenetics lived before she was…” she saw my face.

“Beth, Beth Green.” I breathed heavily and composed myself. “My wife. I was wondering if maybe you knew each other, working up on Torrey Pines and all.” Torrey Pines was the heart of San Diego’s biotech district.

“God, Josh, no I didn’t. I mean I didn’t know her but I knew of her, and I didn’t mean to, well, uhm, you know.”

“It’s okay, Callie. It still hurts if I dwell on it.” Actually it hurt every second of every minute of every day. “Mentioning it just let the door to open a bit more than I usually allow, that’s all. Nothing to be sorry for.”

She didn’t look like she believed me. In fact, she looked terribly sad, but for me rather than herself.

“Callie, it’s OKAY. Look, you just gave a complete, bloody stranger a ride home in your nice truck. And you got to torture him with Bactine while your trusty dog barked at his bike. Take the day for what it has been—fun for the two of you and funny at my expense after my crash. You earned a fair bit of karmic credit today too.”

Another pause, but her face brightened a bit. Chester woofed in approval.

“Okay, Josh the Bleeder, that’s fair enough.”

I thanked her again and we got out (me gingerly) and unloaded my bike. Chester got a well-deserved rub between the ears. I looked at her in wonderment. Here was a tremendously obese woman who had been arbitrarily ostracized by society and had suffered horridly at its arrogant fickleness, yet she hadn’t succumbed at all to the pain inflicted upon her. She could still find the power to give aid to a goofy-ass bloody stranger in need and she could still empathize with the pain of others. She was far advanced compared to the rest of us.

“Alright, Josh, if you’ll be okay. Hey, Chester and I go to Fiesta Island most Saturday mornings. Please stop by and say hi next time you go riding by. Just be sure it’s a proper stop.”

“Deal! Count on it, Callie. Thanks again.” And then I did something wholly uncharacteristic for me—I leaned forward and gave her a long hug. It felt strangely good. I lingered for only a moment and released her. She beamed back.

“Okay, then, see you sometime on the Island of Bloody Knees.”

And with that, she got back in her truck, whistled to Chester who barked once and hopped in beside her and drove off with a wave. I stared, knees stinging and scabbing but chest no longer heaving. The color returned to the day, and I thought about the sublime powers of simple interaction.

There might be idiots, but there are also human beings left here, and that makes all the difference. Hello. How are you? Me? I’m fine thank you. It was nice talking to you, friend.

The sun warmed my back, even if only for a short while.