(Inspired by the song, Red River Valley, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXldBhzVjvc )
The air of the coffee house was choked with the song came out of the
speakers hid above the ceiling. There seem to be something nauseating
and gloomy in the air too. I don’t know how they can play such a
depressing song in this rainy atmosphere. Indeed, the song was a
plagiarized version of a song,
Listen to the Radio by Don
William. You would know how it is awful if you were sitting in this
coffee house. The original sound is a very great one but when you
plagiarize and turn it into another language and put some sort of
musical effects, it turns into a crap. It simply lacks the authenticity.
But as far as I know, most of the people like that plagiarized version.
But I don't know if they have listened to Don Williams'. Maybe they
prefer this song as a translation of the
Listen to the Radio. But the lyrics in the plagiarized version are very different from that of
Listen to the Radio. The
chorus is something like "I want to come to you if I have wings". As if
there's no other mode of transportation. A classic lie of male as he
tries to lure his female partner, I would say. I mean, you can come
whether you have wings or not, right? There’s no need to exaggerate.
What's more, the taste of coffee is awful. When we were about to
order, the waitress said the coffee machine was broken. We did not think
much and order some 'creamy coffee' as it is said so in the menu cards.
Then we find that it is actually an instant coffee with condense milk.
Anyway, we are here to talk and I don't care the coffee. She also
doesn't care the coffee, she says.
"When is that?" I ask her.
"I booked an air ticket for tomorrow. I still need to get things done. I haven’t packed yet and I am a bit excited."
"Yeah, I know what it feels. You are not the only one. "
“Yeah, I just feel upset to check everything and make sure they are ready.”
While waiting for the order, she reaches my hand and grasps my hand. I
think she has small fingers compared to her body or her face. When she
grasps my hand, I somehow feel funny to look at our hands because her
small-sized fingers make my own gigantic.
I am looking at the back covers of the books I have just bought from
the bookshop. Two novels and a book of Big Bang theory. She is not
talking or looking at me. She is staring at the children through the
glass wall of the coffee house. Children are running and chasing each
other while their parents are shopping at the supermarket.
“I want to run,” she says, leaning her head on my shoulder.
“Hmm…. It’s fun, eh? It will be more fun if they run away. From their parents. Or from something or someone.”
She give me a nod. The song being played in the coffee shop is
something about having wings and the children are running. Although I
neither like the children or the song, there are a lot of factors that
encourage one to run away.
I feel her breath on my sleeve, I feel sleepy, order arrives, a woman
comes and passes us and locates herself in a chair, another song
follows after the current song finishes, people walk along outside of
the coffee shop, she looks at me, I look at her, we smile and we reach
to each other hands. She buries her head more into my shoulders and I
put my hand on her shoulder and fondle her hair.
She has that sort of nostalgic smell that makes me look back to the
past. I want to think about who I am and what I have been through as I
am inhaling her smell, her sweetness. I just want to close my eyes while
I am thinking about everything and everyone in the past. It takes a
couple of minutes before I open my eyes. I see her watching me. I don't
know when she has switched her eyes from the children to me and how long
she has been watching me. I want to kiss her. A kiss will make me feel
less sleepy. But PDA is highly restricted here even when you are sitting
at a corner of a stupid coffee house with your girlfriend.
“Your hair is soft and you are beautiful. There’s a connection between them, I am sure.”
She turns up her head to me with a smile. A woman who came in earlier
is looking at us as if we are criminals. I don’t want to make anything
to draw more attention from that woman. She seems very old-fashioned and
we cannot know if she comes to us and lecture how to behave well as a
couple.
I drop the coffee cup back to saucer and say,
“Sometimes you don't need to run away. You just disappear. Do you know some people just vanish into thin air?”
“No, I don’t know. How come?”
“There are some kinds of people who just disappeared. To nowhere.
They are born to disappear. This kind of people. I know one poet in
Mandalay who took a walk before the dinner, maybe he might have kissed
his wife before he left for a walk, and he never came back to his wife
and his family. His wife is always waiting.”
"Oh, that's just sad. What has happened to him?"
"I don't know. Just think of it. You are here. And I am here too. But
we won't be here tomorrow. We left for somewhere. But in the poet's
case, he left for nowhere. All the time normal people like us are
somewhere but we can occupy just one single spot in the universe. You
sit in that chair – just one spot. And I occupy one spot. Only one. And
then you will disappear and go to one another spot. So will I. But some
people reach the place of nowhere and they are considered missing. Never
coming back."
“Never?”
“Yes, never.”
She squints on me. She squints when she needs to think for a long time or when she likes something.
The only thing I enjoy doing when she is squinting is looking for the hidden smiles on her face until she speaks,
“What kind of people are missing?”
“I don’t know. There are people who went shopping for Christmas and
never come back. And some people were sleeping at their home and they
disappeared with the rise of the sun. We will probably go missing after
coming out of this coffee house. Our parents will report the police but
they will never find us."
"Where do we go?"
"There might be an abyss at the end of meadow. It is a place for all
the missing people. Perhaps, we will meet with Vaginia Woolf , Ambrose
Bierce and Abbie Hoffman.”
"There might be some chances only one of us will disappear soon. How
would you feel when I disappear in such a way?" I ask her. She tilts her
head to me as she is thinking for the answer. She has the sort of body
heat that can connect to other people. Warmth and heat from her are
radiated to my body.
It takes her a couple of seconds to respond. I stare around the
coffee house waiting for her reply. The woman who has been looking to us
with suspicious eyes finally gets down to reading alone. Maybe she has
found the book more interesting than watching a young couple. I sneak a
look at the cover of the book she is reading. I have never heard of the
writer or the name of the book.
“I will cry for sure. I don't like the feeling of being left. It's
like listening to a song with the highest volume the speakers can bare
and it ends up abruptly. There is a silence without a hint. Without any
foreshadow. There are silence in your ears and nothing more. You will
hear the song from within but that's not real. ”
"You are lovely," I say. Then the next moment I find my lips pressing
against hers. There is a cough from the woman after we are kissing for
five seconds. Neither of us wants to stop but we sit back and try to
hide the awkwardness. I take a quick glance at the woman who is
monitoring on us as if she is a guardian of no-kiss-on-earth.
“Perhaps, we can assure ourselves we haven’t disappeared until now because that woman’s eyes are always on us."
She takes a glance over the woman. She agrees with me and giggles
silently. And then she gives me a kind of look that I can’t explain
whether she is going to smile or cry.
"Yes, you are right. She's like that."
She makes the face of the woman, and I laugh at it.
“I want to kiss you more,” I tell her.
“Let’s go outside of this creepy place,” she gets up squeezing my fingers.
As we leave the coffee house, there are some gray clouds in the sky.
There are not many people and cars on the road. It is cool to walk
through the breeze.
“Let’s pretend we are missing people,” she continues, “no one sees us, right?”
“Yeah, no one really sees us. Hey can you see me?” I shout to the
people walking on the opposite sidewalk. None of them can hear us or
bother to respond my faint shout.
“Look, no one is aware of us. Which means they can’t see us, now,” I tell her, laughing.
“We will go somewhere and kiss,” she says to me. “Behind that tree,” she points at the big tree.
My hands are around her neck, my lips almost touch to hers and we
stay in this position for five minutes. And then we sit together on the
ground and I hum,
“Joan was quizzical; studied pataphysical
Science in the home.
Late nights all alone with a test tube.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.”
She smiles at the song and sings,
“Maxwell Edison, majoring in medicine,
Calls her on the phone.
"Can I take you out to the pictures,
Joa, oa, oa, oan?"
“Hey, am I singing it in the right way?” she tilts her head from side
to side as she is singing. She makes her lips in O-shape as she is
singing. I cannot forget her smell, I think to myself.
“Yeah, you are. It’s a great song. It’s funny,” I tell her.
“And it’s sad,” she adds.
“Funny and sad it is.” I conclude.
She rummages in
her bag and take out her iPod. She gives me a bud of ear phone and plugs
one into her ear. There are birds making funny noises on the tree. But
we are abducted from this world as we are listening to the song until
the sense of eternity has clashed with the beeping of the reality.
I get up early and sit on my head. I cannot see the
sunlight in my room. Maybe it’s too early for the sun to rise. My house
is located under the path air planes fly. It roars for five seconds when
an air plane is flying above my head. I wonder if she is in that air
plane. Maybe I should run to the top of the hill and wave to her. I
should shout to her how much I love her. Or I should shout to her how
often I love her.
But if I get out of my room, some people will find that I
am not ‘missing’. When you are not missing, you have to do something.
You should go to school or you should work and be a part of GDP. I just
want to sit and read some books. And I will read those books again when I
have finished. With the music on the speakers.
