The Purple Jar

A.B. just about said it right when we talked about law school vis-a-vis life as a lawyer over beer and chili fries one unexpected Friday night..that the sad part about being a new lawyer  is that while being in school is all about possibilities and potential, you find yourself practicing law and being expected to realize that potential, with the consequence of the frustration of  climax and of unfulfilled dreams. As if actually experiencing something lessens the enjoyment of the experience itself. Our existence is essentially a state of "the perpetual not-yet" and thus, any experience is anticlimactic, each experience an own taste of trauma.

I bask in that infinite sense of possibility, of a future always seemingly beyond my reach…while struggling to owning the gravity of the present moment.

But there was one night when there was spontaneity and perhaps an inkling of possibility.  Although I had multiple reasons to feel awkward in us even being together, in the end, all’s well that ends well.  When I go home to a sleeping house with an irrepressible smile on my face, that can only be a good thing.

He gave me an organic experience of togetherness which I did not see coming, as if being ensconced alone together in his car, just the two of us, cocooned from the lashings of the rain and a city awashed in sleep and lights brought out a different him and/or perhaps a different me—certainly different from how we were when other people were around.  As if senses were awakened by the thrill of caramel and mocha, an unexpected and not unwelcome second wind.  What was it about sitting together, going nowhere, the spontaneity of someone who took me somewhere else, just when i thought i was already going home?  Or the effortless nature of of a time spent together carried away by a conversation altogether trivial but nonetheless mirthful in its surreal underpinnings.  Or of the thrill of spooking each other out in a blackhole of familiar streets, and of making excuses not to part ways by looking for places to satiate the hunger of the stomach and failing that, getting filled up by the afterglow of fear and shouts of release after the terror of the imagination has finished with its visions.

After the night, after being soothed to sleep by the smiles of remembrance and promises of mutual forgetting, there is in fact no assurance of what the reality of morning would bring.  I am suspended in the limbo of anticipation of tomorrow and the delicious savorings of the spontaneity of a present all too suddenly sucked by yesterday.  We do not know each other.  I am pathetically far off from being known by him and likewise I, from knowing him.  Last night could very well be the only night of its kind.  We may pass each other in the corridors of reality and not even have any kindling of spark-filled connections if in fact there were any. Or we may be overwhelmed by the brightness of the day or the jolt of being reminded that we do not exist in a vacuum. 

Perhaps there are just some things that can flourish in an environment nourished by the rhythm of the rain and the darkness of driving through the endless night.  If in fact that is the serendipity with which we are being brought forward, I will still nod to the grace of finding such a memory in the fleeting beauty of what is otherwise chaos.  I will carry no expectations nor regrets for the repercussions or the disappointments or the possibilities of what was and what awaits.