The History of Gravity - Ch. 5

5.

I find myself perpetually in circumstances of compromise: self and values lost; situations that I create, allow, continue, resist with what seems like everything within, but are impossible to avoid. There are gravities in me that control my life that I am not aware of, strings pulling me like a puppet, yanked and tugged and tossed about through the universe like Andy, brother of Raggedy Anne. I sit, eyes resting on Annie in front of me, across the table. My nostrils are saturated with her, her scent, potent and rich, gathering and overwhelming the soft inner ear of my nose.

Everything inside me hates her. Everything inside me, right now, screams for me to get up and walk away. But I don’t. I sit. I sit across from her, following the movements of her lips, acknowledging with the movements of my head: my head, nodded by the puppet master, moved against my conscious will. There was some deeper will, deeper desire, deeper value that compromised and trumped all of my conscious self. My life is lived in compromise and shadow, and lived by something I cannot see and do not know, for here I sit against my consciousness will, but I continue to sit.

My fingers clasp a cold glass with a whisky soul. I twirl ice. I drink. Whiskey is stale against the tongue. In its southerly throat slide a pungent rush floods my nostrils, temporary relief from her lingering olfactory presence, and then the final, perfect, expansion of warmth and happiness opens from my belly towards the rest of my body.

“You’re drinking fast,” she said. I was drinking fast. I had been drinking fast for a year.

“I’ve been drinking fast for a year.”

There are moments of light, ease, fluidity and grace. Moments when life effortlessly unfolds and nothing matters much less the quality of light, the honest kiss of air on skin, and sweet indulgent assimilation of each breath. Moments of love, complete satisfaction, when all desires, wants and needs have been satiated, and all that remains is freedom and flow: this is when I am most myself; this is freedom.

Sitting here, across from Annie, freedom lost, I desperately long for my natural state, and resent her, Annie, for evaporating my perfect stasis. With her words, her movements, her gestures, with her, drunk through my senses, I am bound.

All lovers, all people, establish their own rules for the game of love. We walk around with these rules, and they guide our actions – the puppet master divorced from the appearance of the show. Most of us are unconscious of these rules. We don’t know what they are, and we only know their existence by the affect they have on our lives. Annie built her set of rules, and I built mine, and at a certain point our rules raged against each other.

In the fourth century, Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, believed that there was no effect without a cause, and thus no motion without specific force. It’s in prejudice that gravity and science in the west are often attributed to western thought, but it has conceptually existed much longer in the Indian mind. Aristotle, much like Kanada and Brahmagupta, theorized that objects moved in attraction based on weight.

Paradoxically it was the westerner, Aristotle, not an easterner that saw gravity holding relevance outside of the physical world. He also hypothesized that everything moved towards its proper place in the heavens – that is: up. Aristotle saw gravity as two things. First, a physical attraction based on mass moving towards the earth, and a spiritual attraction based on perfection moving away from the earth.

The simple, clear, but pathetic truth between Annie and me was that we actually understood each other’s rules, though we, ourselves, did not even understand our personal preferences. There was an inexplicable relational gravity that bound us together, while there was an ideal of perfection that drove us apart. We walk around the world storying ourselves through relationships assuming we’re understood and that we are understanding. I walked with Annie like this, and though we walked side-by-side, we stood miles apart.

I now sat directly in front of her, and we were still miles apart. Another long draw of whiskey: stale against the tongue, like the lingering taste of a love now lost.

“You need to know I’m sorry, Philos. I am very, very sorry for everything. I made so many mistakes, and though you weren’t the easiest person in the world to be with…”

“You’re not going to make this about me, again, are you?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.” I didn’t mean it like that. The words echoed through my head.

Images and feelings collided with each neuron. A small reality of memories unfolds. A beaming sunlit Sunday morning; we were in bed, sleepy in soft, gold, Southern California light. Between covers, sheets, and pillows; between lust and satisfaction, we rested sweetly. She whispered in my ear, “We’re going to be together forever, just like this, forever, aren’t we? Tell me we’re going to be together forever.” She stroked my face and hair. Her gaze penetrated and held. She kissed my face. “You mean marriage? Kids? House? Forever, forever?” I asked. “No, darling, no. I didn’t mean it like that.” I didn’t mean it like that. (She never meant it like that.) “I mean just like this, forever, just like this.” She took me into her mouth.

My groins harden and my pelvis lifts: thighbones are pulled forward and up. My head fell back. I let go in her mouth, with the sunlight pressing warm into my face. “I’m going to drink you forever,” she said, “just like this.”

“You never mean it like that,” I said. Twirl of ice, drink of whiskey. “Tell me, then, Annie, how do you mean it?”

“I love you, Philos, and I’m sorry. I want you.”

“There is nothing left of me for you to have. I am done.”


I woke up slow and fuzzy. I could smell liquor before all else cognized. I knew by the feeling of the sheets that I was not in my bed. With my next breath, a lightning spring of pain geysered trough my mind. The taste of alcohol and sex was in my mouth and soul. Another lost fuck, gratifying to my body, glands, pussy, but sad for my heart and puncturing to my soul. I’ve always thought myself a modern woman, free and sexually liberated, but for whatever reason, deep down, I rejected my liberated actions. These were not free. A one-night stand or a casual fuck is a sadistic jihad against the sweet beauty and divine affirmation of love well made. Without emotion, feeling, connection, care, sex is simply masturbating with a body that I can’t feel from the inside out. I, for one, am tired of fingering myself.

He rolled and bumped me. I opened my eyes. His room was cavernous, dark, and dusty. Another eruption of pain in my head: what did I drink? Whiskey. Always whiskey. Only whiskey. Your mom drank whiskey straight; she could catch a room on fire, is what dad used to tell me. I drank whiskey straight. I doubt I catch rooms on fire.

I rolled out of bed. Silently. I walked and felt for my clothes in the grey, dark room. Dad said that he knew from the first time she handed him a whiskey + rocks and clinked her glass of whiskey + rocks against mine that she was the woman he needed in his life: dad imprinted whiskey and my mother on my soul. I felt around in the dark actions mirroring mind. Pants, bra, shirt, one shoe, the other shoe. No panties. Where are the panties? The panties will be left, with a piece of my soul.

Pulling up my paints, I hopped quietly to the door. Bra, shirt. Hopping on one foot, right shoe. Hopping no on the other, left shoe. I open the bedroom door. More grey light and tired dust wedged into the room.

“Are you leaving?” A voice echoes from the deep – creation!

“Yes. I’ll see you at rehearsal.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll see you later.” Hallway. Living room. Purse. Phone. No missed call. No message. No text. No Philos.

I walked through the eastside towards my car. East Los Angeles: a graveyard of masturbatory experiences, a garden of relics past, and a reminder of the dissatisfaction of disconnection. It is my nature to move towards union sweet, and it is away from connection my life continually spins. “Ennui, ennui,” the love-bird sang. And it was within these notes and its’ song that my thoughts twirled.

With the shining light of wisdom, my love casts soft shadows, but now wisdom was dry and absent like moister in Los Angeles’ fall Santa Ana winds. Dust to bone, ashes to ashes. Contractions and dullness in the body reflect visionary disassociation. Patterns in the brain repeat forever with revised content, but sadly most believe the nature of content to be self. I believe my content to be me and I know this is wrong, but I do not know another way.

Through the graveyard of the eastside, and through the graveyard of my mind, I step my walk of shame: the shameless shame of a liberated woman.


Annie fucked it up for me again. I fucked it for myself again. Patterns within nature constantly repeat. Annie, for whatever reason, had the power to remove everything of virtue and importance:

Dreams
Vision
Low cost fuel
Love
Post consumer recycled products
Sex
Luck
Art (especially good art)
Faith in Humanity
Faith in Divinity
Rocking out
Non-Violent international relations
Community
Joy
Gut splitting laughter
Eco systems
Good posture
Tasteful fashion
Chance
Long holiday weekends
Vocabulary

With one sweep of the hand and tongue, realities, suspended by belief and disbelief, are dismantled, imploded, and destroyed: Death Star in Return of the Jedi ad infinitum. I do not know why she places me in such meandering confusion, resentment, and disconnect. One moment, I know everything, lifted by the promise of new and considerate love, and then she, as if magically, reappears. The universe flies apart and Bastian on the back of Falcor cannot save The Empress, and reality, my reality, flies effortlessly apart.

The pain of confusion is different than any other pain. It’s not sharp and demanding. It doesn’t force immediate change, like a hand on the stove, the ache of loss in the heart or the punch-in-the-gut of betrayal. The pain of confusion rests solely within one’s self, but affects all those around them. Dulled by the gauze of confusion, the senses are confined to their egoic prison of indecision waiting and wanting someone to decide fate. Pull me forward and from this pathetic experience! is their war cry.

Annie now, again, wanted me and loved me. She had returned, from indecision to decision, and now left me in indecision. To be loved by her again would not heal the wound the absence of her love tore in my soul. And there was Sophia, in her perfect mystery; she allowed herself to be sung by me, forever celebrating the sunrise and continuously singing of daisies. Consider the sparrows, consider the lilies; never having spun or stored, they are provided for. Unfortunately, lilies and sparrows aren’t capable of human emotion and complexity.

The History of Gravity - Chapter 4

4.

In the early 6th century, Brahmagupta said, “All heavy things fall down to the earth by the law of nature, for it is the nature of the earth to attract and to keep things, as it is the nature of water to flow, that of fire to burn, and that of wind to set in motion. The earth is the only low thing, and seeds always return to it, in whatever direction you may throw them away, and never rise upwards from the earth."

As objects of mass, it is our nature to attract and be attracted. When gravity is considered or experienced as a force, a constant, there is a reciprocal and cyclical relationship the textured fabric of experience – we are always being attracted to and we are always attracting. It is the nature of mass to attract, and all things within reality have mass.

I look into the architecture of myself; I wind myself through the labyrinth of thought feeling structures, float down the halls of memories past, seeking constructed realities of pleasure and pain, pleasurable pain, and painful pleasure, pushing deep to the very bedrock of my self-constructed experience and self-constructed self to understand the forces of inner gravity that push and pull me constantly in all directions. I look into myself for answers of love and understanding. I wander on a journey of wonder; deeply curious I find myself weighing the impact of each thought and feeling and noticing the affect it has on my locomotion. With each act, there are centuries of memories being fulfilled and infinite chains of bondage being linked. The force of inner gravity drives my experience, and it has nothing to do with me.

“Philos?” My exploration ends. The fabric of reality snaps me back into the heart of its womb. I turn. She stands.

“Annie?” Stomach drops – pit infinitum - throat suspended in time. Quick sand: a slow, torturous, grating death that ends with liquid sand in your mouth, nose, and ears collapsing senses, and absorbing life.

I have always loved people I cannot have. I have not seen the woman I cannot have for almost 11 months.

Seeing her is a revelatory experience. A myriad of images, visions and feelings arise simultaneously, much like Krishna’s divine revelation in the Bhagavad Gita. In me there is a merry-go-round of impulses, feelings, and thoughts.

I want to throw myself at her feet and beg her to love me; I want to backhand her like a French pimp; I want to crawl inside of her and hear her heart beat; I want to hug her close and smell her hair; I want to throw her on the floor, strip her clothes off, and rape her; I want to turn around without saying anything and resume my place in the coffee line; I want to punch her as hard as I can; I want her to love me; I want to never see her again; I want to climb into a time machine, dive back three years past, and warm myself of the intolerable fate before me.

We were never supposed to see each other again.


My bow, a phantom limb, strokes in time to enact a dreamy reality. I spin a land of yellow and gold, notes streaking across the sky; children playfully wade through this spring pond, mud not clinging – their white linen is still pure. Down they fall with a hard draw on the bottom string, they are sent into space, flying, freefalling in gravity. In my daytime night dream, my music spins forms, realities, places that will live forever unknown. Step across and through these beating missiles of warring action; I am driven to stroke this song.

Through my fantasy, my pleasurable drift, his eyes peer at me densely. In his mind, realities also unfold. He spoke his love, numerous times, and in wine and weakness I gave myself to him. And now, relentlessly he follows me. I sometimes give in, when I am lonely, when I need to feel pretty, when I want a body near me or in me. But I do not love him like he loves me. He loves me, selflessly in his assumption, but he hardly knows me. He loves his ideas about me. He loves my sex. He loves my form. He loves my playing. He loves the person I am when I am with him. But he does not know me, for I have not let him yet see me, and I never will, because I do not love him.

Love allows for truth, for true seeing, and he will never see me clearly. But, the problem is, he thinks he does.

He sits next to me. We play in the strings together. He plays the violin, and he, like the violin, is beautiful but cannot make me sing.

We sit in a drifting halo of resin – clouded by our own efforts. By the way he continues to touch me with is energy and wanting, he plans to fondle me again tonight. There is conflict now. I only have eyes and heart for Philo, who still rests on my lips and, perhaps, in my bed.


“We were never supposed to see each other again,” I said, echoing the storm within my oceanic interior.

“I can’t help it if we bump into each other at Starbucks, Philos. Philos…”

“No, I suppose you can’t. But you can go away, far away, like you said you would.”

“It’s been almost a year. I came back. Listen, I’ve been thinking about you, I want to talk to you. Can we meet tonight? Meet me at Mixville for a drink. You like it there.”

No. Fuck you. “Okay.”

Love can make you free, light, and weightless. Love can tie you, suffocating you with weight and oppression. Love may have more mass than anything in this universe. But the paradox of love is that it both sets you free, weightlessly drifting through story, and it binds you relentlessly to the earth. Right now, I am bound, and Annie will not set me free. No one can set me free and no one can bind me, for love itself, is bondage and freedom. Sadly, though, I only experience bondage now.

She was flawless. She was not perfect, but her imperfections were invisible to me, and I liked it this way. After she betrayed and left me naked, cold and alone, I tried to establish her imperfections, but they could not be present. Love makes all things shine, and the shine does not, sadly, wear off.

When love is placed on an object; when I placed loved on Annie, I gave myself to bondage. I am bond, not because she is no gone, but because I placed love in her lap. I gave it to her and left it with her, and in giving it to her I bound myself to her. I am bond. Love will not set me free.

Her smile was poised, open. Her lips were soft, light pink, disappearing into her skin. Her eyes flashed. Her big brown eyes shined on me. I was lit, carefully, like a director lights his subject, by her. Brown, indie locks whipped lightly as she nodded her head. “Good. Thank you. How’s 8?” she asked.

“8 works.”

“Good.” Her lips, wet with her language, held my gaze. I drift slowly now, but soon the drift accelerates, and the gravity of pulsar collapse draws me into its black mystery.


“Let me buy you dinner tonight,” he said while placing his hand on my shoulder. I hurried. I gathered my gear. I walked to my car with intention and hast. I was ineffective in liberating myself from him.

“I don’t know Trevor, I have a lot to do. And I had a late night last night. I’m tired.” When a human eye beholds a form that is stimulating, the pupil expands so that more light and form can be absorbed in the brain. While the eye imbibes this pleasurable form, the brain and neural system fire pathways of pleasure, and glands pump chemicals: elation. In response to these chemicals of pleasure, the mind and heart begin to weave stories of futures yet realized. In a glance, I have lived lifetimes. Right now, though, my pupils were not dilating or expanding. Neither were they contracting with disgust and distain. They remained neutral, in the in between.

Most of life seems to happen in the in between, in neutral spaces that are neither here nor there. Most of life unfolds, flows in the covers and folds of mediocre confusion and uncertainty, never gaining resonance or dissonance. This is why I will probably sleep with Trevor, again, sometime; if not tonight then a night in the future. Because I fail to make a decision right now, my decisions will be made for me. I suppose this is why, in my wake, suffering of heart and mind grasp at my achilles with open hand.

I wish I could simply despise him. I wish I could simply love him. But there was something between his mind, his heart, and his cock that I could neither let loose or completely let in.

Philos, on the other hand, was someone I could drink forever.

“Just dinner. Nothing else,” he said. I doubted that.

“You assume there might be something else?” I said, laughing, not at him, but at me.

“I want to talk with you. I feel so good when we play together.”

“You call that play? You must have had a very oppressed and perverted childhood”

“Sophia… to witty for your own good.”

“I don’t know, Trevor.”

“We’ll do something close to you, and you’ll be home by 9.”

“Just dinner?”

“Yes.”

“Promise?”

“Yes, Sophia, I promise.” A promise one never intends to keep is nothing but a fear being greatly avoided. I promise not to hurt you, he said, once. And he did. Not a great hurt. You can’t hurt someone that doesn’t care that much, but it still hurt, some. Like the nurse says, “just a prick.” It’s more than a prick though, because beyond the prick, with the injection, there is pain, and then residual pain. The pain of one act carries over into a lifetime of ripples, waves, and drifting motions. You can’t promise something that goes completely against every impulse in your body and mind, and his impulses and intentions were clear tonight. He was going to bed me if it was the last thing he did.

I reached for my phone. No missed call. No voicemail. No text message. Where was Philos?

“I doubt it. But okay.” Okay, for now, drifting in the in between.

The History of Gravity - Chapter 3

3.

Standing in the dingy glow of my door light his shadow cast warmly almost touching me. His confidence and vulnerability were both, simultaneously, concerning and endearing. I wanted him and I feared him; and I think that all relationships of textured and rich meaning evoke these feelings in me. Love is to want and to fear. It’s heralded as something selfless, divine. But those that have loved me, truly just loved themselves, and those that I have loved, well, it was also a loving of myself.

Selfless acts of love end with selfish acquisitions. Christ’s selfless act of love, proclaimed as the greatest act of love in the western world, ended with the acquisition of divinity. To truly love selflessly is something humans and divinity will never know. One day, though, perhaps, I will love selflessly. One day, perhaps, there will only be love, completely removed from any gain I could possibly hope for. But for now, I wanted him, and there was something to be gained.

“Coming in?” He nodded: yes. He was coming in.

He stepped inside. Close to him, I am both big and small.

The paradox of offering love, of giving one’s self fully is clear; in giving love, one also receives. In giving myself to Philos, now, something becomes clear in me. Something, myself, is now held in greater definition. To say that Philos only means wisdom is ridiculous, for it can also mean love. To say that I, Sophia, only means love is a lie, for I also mean wisdom.

Disambiguation is a direct meaning of Philos, and I can’t help but think that both love and wisdom is cause for clarity. In love, we became clear and we know what matters. In wisdom, we became uncluttered, in orbit of the essential. As I entered into Philos’ magnetism, I became defined.

“This is my home,” I said.

“Yes, it is,” he replied. He had become shy, sliding and rolling in between complete assured existence and uncertain porousness. His soul was open and his heart was filled with holes. Holes I could never fill myself, but perhaps he would let me hold them – and perhaps in holding them, they would begin, themselves, to fill in.

Though premature, one thing was certainly true; I knew I loved him, without hesitation.


The way she held me with her eyes was almost uncomfortable. I recall, once, looking into the eyes of a supposed enlightened guru, guru something-or-another, and though I thought his whole thing was complete shit: the room, the decorations, his hippy bullshit devotees, the music, incense, and roaming turtle doves, there was something about the meeting of our eyes that was completely safe and completely fear evoking. The alluring power of her pull was of a Jupitarian nature, and I was slowly, consciously and unconsciously, giving myself to her.

I had the impulse to give her a high-five. Do people still high-five? Do lovers, before enacting love, high-five? I doubt it. And if it was to occur, I think that it would not lead to the foreshadowed act of love we both seemed to anticipate.

“Do people still high-five?” I asked. Silence broken.

“Yes, I think they do.” She held up her hand and cocked her applesque head to the side. My hand collided with hers. We high-fived. Her head dropped in a playful giggle. Her body wiggle and then shook, and she let out a little laugh while covering her mouth like a Japanese teenager. “We need a drink, Philos, don’t you think.”

“Yes. Yes.” Yes, please, anything to tame these butterflies.

“I think I only have whisky.”

“Bless your heart. That should tame them.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The butterflies; they’re a bit unruly right now.”

“Passive aggressive…”

“Aggressive aggressive.” She poured. Classic, vintage glasses, in her vintage guesthouse, in her vintage neighborhood, with its’ vintage street lamps. Her house, simple and elegant, in its classic-Hollywoodness-ness; it had a soul, and that was the most pronounced decoration. The soul, accessorized by ceiling moldings, large French windows, door tiles, in a large studio, with a separate walk in closet, kitchen and bathroom, like all soul-established Hollywood guesthouses.

Like her home, it was her soul, accessorized by her body, heart and mind that held me. Though it was dark, we sat together in the light.

It was a simple room with a glowing wood floor. A bed, a chase, a book shelf which would be thoroughly explored later, stacks of music, a violin, a cello, and a music stand placed in front of a stool, all supported by the warm glowing floor, all held to earth by the mystery of gravity.

“You play?” I asked. Stupid question. Stupid fucking question. She giggled. Stupid fucking question.

The significant thing about gravity in the Newtonian perspective is that all objects, in a vacuum, fall at the same speed eventually reaching what is called terminal velocity, which is the fastest speed at which anything can fall.

“Yes. For the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It’s my job.”

“Really? That’s gorgeous.” What she did had not yet occurred to me or concerned me. Who she was: now that was important! “I played once, for a short time. For just two years I think.”

“The cello or the violin?”

Outside of a vacuum, within an atmosphere, things theoretically fall at the same rate, except the variable of atmospheric resistance. An object with more mass has greater gravity available to it, and thus has a greater effect on space/time.

“Violin.”

Through my body, a bird chases a butterfly.

“The violin was my first love, but the cello sings me.”

Here’s the really interesting thing though: a vacuum is space, or that’s to say, empty of almost all gravity, yet mass cannot exist without gravity and gravity cannot exist without mass; they are simultaneous arising phenomenon.

They are perhaps one and the same.

“I like that – sings me.” She sings me, I think.

The gravity of Sophia was directly equal to the mass amounting as her. I create those I am with, with my thoughts and feelings for them. Sophia was become a galaxy, in my universe, and galaxy of great mass.

“I do too. That’s when I really learned to play – when I let myself be sung. The cello was the first instrument to sing me, and because of that I’ve never left it.”

“My first and only teacher was a grumpy, old German man. He played in the German national orchestra for years, before moving to the states and slapping young students on the wrist with his dusty old bow.”

“Typical German,” she said.

“I didn’t count. And that was my demise.”

“Yes, you can’t play if you don’t count.”

“You can’t play if you don’t count. That’s what he said,” I spoke and nodded in agreement with her. “You can’t play if you don’t count,” I said in my worst German accent while wiggling my finger


He sat. There was beauty organized beneath his outer rough, unshaven features. His green eyes sparkled; there was great vision in his heart, and yet a shadow of pain. He was afraid, but challenging his fear. Heart both open and closed, he desired me. I could feel the pull of his body, of his gut. The attraction between us was instinctual, raw, and organic. His hair fell in his face, like Kurt Cobain; but not so much that his strong jaw was concealed. His pain covered him too, but not so much that his heart was concealed.


“What do you do?” she asked.

“I write and I work in a coffee shop.”

She giggled. “You and everyone else at the Drawing Room.”

“No, I think a few, at least, sell bud.”

“Yeah, that’s for sure. What do you write?”

“I’ve been researching and writing about gravity for the last year.”

“You write scientifically?”

“No, philosophically. Gravity, though based in science, is really philosophical in nature. It’s still a theory, see.”

“Not really, babe.”

“We take gravity for granted because things fall and we walk upon the earth, but ultimately gravity is just a theory – it can’t be proved. There are consistencies, at least, in the Newtonian perspective, but by the time we get to Einstein, the universe is an organized clusterfuck, and gravity is a flexible variable, at best.”

“Why did you start reading and writing about gravity?”

“Moments like this – moments like you.”

“A girl?’

“Yes.”

“Her name?”

“Annie.”

“She betrayed you?”

“Yes, but I still loved her, for a long time. I still perhaps do.”

“I suppose you will forever.”

“I suppose I will too.”


In a sun drenched garden a butterfly floats, from nowhere, in hovering descent. The monarch twirls; a juvenile dancer among bleached flowers and leaves, singing of daisies with movement driven by sunbursts and carefree indifference. Defying gravity, her wings flap visionary speeches of great human potential. She softly, gently comes to rest on a petal. Fanning her wings cool, she imbibes, held by gravity.


Eyes closed. Warm and soft sun light slowly pulled me from the drunk, intoxicated depths of sleep. There were new smells and different feelings; I wasn’t at home. And then the night of last rushed forward, a new universe created. I rested for a moment, with warmth on my face, and light streams cascading behind my eyelids – and then, open!

I was in bed alone. She was gone. A note:

darling –

you’re beautiful. i had to go to practice and couldn’t
think to wake you. see you soon, i hope? no need
to lock the door. it’s always open. help yourself to
coffee, and stay as long as you like.

you were amazing last nigh. thanks for the gravity.

xo – Sophia
323.356.4472

The History of Gravity: Chapter 2

2.

The impact of elevated heels against cement sidewalk squares clapped a grated friction. Though her step was pronounced, she walked with me softly, in the bright glowing Los Angeles night. The ancient palms, costing hundreds of thousands, waved themselves in the night sky. We were walking, Sophia and me, back to her apartment.

It happened fast. It seemed almost impulsive. We were talking of things small, foundational and meaningless – casual conversation – which we would later refer to and laugh at, dissecting meaning, nervousness, and our internal experiences, as we rest in bed many years from now. We were talking of things small and she leaned into me, falling forever, and whispered, “I want you to take me home now.” But we still talk of things small, I thought. And I said that to her. She smiled, closed her eyes and took a breath, and said, “Yes, but the feeling is big.”

We walk now, to her home, speaking still of things small, but sharing in a feeling continuously growing – a feeling that was big. Rounding up Hilhurst, a right on Ambrose, more palms, and the continuous click click of her heels. There have been other walks like this. Late night, alcohol stained strolls through Los Angeles. Other women, other times, same nervousness, similar expectations.

“Our names together…” I began to say.

“Philosophia – I know: philosophy.”

“The love of wisdom.”

“Or the wisdom of love.”

Conversation was no longer small, and this walk was no longer the same. She put her hand in mine, and with cautious breathlessness she wrapped her calloused fingertips around mine. We now, walked in silence.

We were bordered by the Griffith Park hills to our left. Dark and empty in their unlit majesty, those hills were the black patches of daylight play space that consumed the summers of my youth. The afternoons were split between the community pool, Griffith Park, and classes at Barnsdale Art Park, where a bigger white kid ounce pinned me down and held an Exacto knife to my throat because I said that I thought his photography sucked. I was white too. We were actually the only white kids in the class, and it now seems ironic that we should be on the floor holding knives to each other’s throats. East Los Angeles, in the 80s, was rough. But perhaps not as rough as the white people like to believe. I am now pinned to the floor in a different way, by a different white person.

“It’s not too much further,” she said as we turned left onto Commonwealth and crossed the street.

“I’m in no rush,” I said. It was true. I was in no rush. I hadn’t been with a woman since Annie left me. It at first seemed natural to morn like this, and then natural became routine, and routine became habit, and I suppose it’s been almost a year now. The thought of being inside of her apartment frightened me. The thought of being inside her was almost paralyzing. But like Del Close said, “follow the fear,” so I chased her lead.

Crossing the street we turned onto Cedarhurst Drive. Cedarhurst accessorized itself with the classic, grooved cement light posts. Relics, artifacts of ancient Hollywood, telling stories of mythical proportion. Los Angeles’ charm, like a woman’s, is found in her details, her complexities, and her secrets. Her light posts tell stories, just like the stars and planets in the night sky, donned with gravity, tell their stories; or perhaps it’s us projecting our stories onto them.

There was a slight upgrade to the street. In the rhythm of the click, click of her perfectly timed steps, she reach out and held my arm. I followed the fear. We swept left and walked up Cedarhurst Circle. In a car Cedarhurst Circle is a one-way street; walking, we were permitted to roam in whatever direction we pleased.

Newton’s theory of gravity: there is a constant universal gravitational pull in relationship to an object’s mass that attracts other objects.

Newton reasoned if a canon were shot from a mountaintop with enough speed it would constantly, perpetually fall towards the earth, but never reach the surface because of the planet’s curve. The canon ball would constantly fall around the earth, like the moon fell around the earth.

I looked up at the moon, bright yellow autumn orb. We stopped. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she asked. I looked at her, and she, clasping my arm looked at me.

“Yes,” I said, “but unfulfilled.”

“The moon is unfulfilled?”

“Yes. She constantly falls, attracted by the pull and force of the Earth, but because of her velocity, she will never unite with the object of her attraction. She will constantly wander the night sky, dreaming of her projected reunion, never to find it.”

“That’s awfully sad. What will she have to do?” Her eyes felt me.

“Slow down, I suppose.”

“She will, I think.”


I wanted him to kiss me there in the middle of the street in the middle of the night in the middle of Los Angeles. We stood together, in silence, eyes talking. I was telling him my secrets, the dark corners of my soul, and the yearning I felt for him in that moment. My eyes pleaded for the taste of his lips. He didn’t hear their cry, though; he didn’t get the message. Boys never know when to kiss girls.

An airplane has never survived an aquatic crash. And yet, blow-up life vest makers and floating seat manufactures produce and ship thousands a year to airline manufactures each year to install in airplanes. Stewards and stewardesses spent thousands of minutes each year explaining how to remove the floating seat cushions and inflate the little yellow vests. They will never be used though. It’s a psychological tool. These devices help people feel safe. However, an airplane crashing into the sea at 600 miles an hour is torn to shreds instantly.

His arm was my life vest, and soon I will be torn to shreads.

I turned and returned to my velocity. I think we’ll need to slow down even more in the future.

I liked the way he let me guide him, and I liked the way his arm held my hand. There was a potent strength about and a yielding sensitivity, sans the missed invitation, that pleased me: I liked the way he felt and I liked the feelings he produced. When I was at Julliard, I was driven towards perfection and personality. The Cello wasn’t only supposed to sing perfectly, but I was supposed to sing me perfectly. That’s the difference between me, a philharmonic player, and anyone that simply plays an instrument: the instrument sings me.

I began when I was five with the violin. I remember seeing a painting of a woman playing the violin, and there was something about her, an open soft power, that inspired me to play. I began with the violin. I was flawless with the violin, and I still am, but the violin does not sing me. I switched, when I was 14, to the cello. With the first movement of the bow across the cello’s deep strings, before the resin, the dust, settled on her open belly, the cello began singing me, and that was when my life began.

For whatever reason, tonight felt like that, like my life was again beginning. Philos began to sing me.

“Just through here, Philos. I live in the guest house in back.” We walked around the side of the larger house, my landlord’s house, an adult version of my miniature dollhouse.


She stood at the front door, smiling, eyes flashing, almost dancing.

“I want you to come inside, but I am not going to sleep with you tonight. Is that okay?”

“That’s okay.” Following the fear, I stepped inside.