“I’m moving to California.” The response to anyone inquiring about my future after college. Higher education, lower education, ungainful employment–mere formalities on the way to my true calling. Leaving. I had never so much as visited Los Angeles but that didn’t matter, it was like any goal, simply arbitrary…
[Fade in] SOUTHWEST VIRGINIA . . .
My last week of formal education–I’m not so patiently waiting for that fleeting window when sunlight eclipses a fortress of foliage and stretches past the dilapidated barn onto my bare skin (but not totally bare, that could lead to comfort-wrenching small talk with our sexually ambiguous landlord living in the basement). Anyway, this, sun tanning on an overgrown lawn fertilized solely by aged mutt excrement, is how I spend warm summer afternoons after the last class of my college career (Film Studies) in Wise, VA–a college ghost town borderline dead during the semester, imagine when students evacuate en masse for summer. Incapable of irony, the iPod shuffles to my second favorite Cranberries song, and as Dolores O’Riodan repeats the chorus, “This is not Hollywood, is not Hollywood, not Holly–,” an actual deer emerges from the woodås. No kidding.
[Smash Cut] HOLLYWOOD BLVD . . .
I made it. Exactly one year after completing that last summer semester in the aforementioned paradise to Bambi and coal miners, I’m walking down a Hollywood Boulevard brimming with homeless Superheros and Asian tourists. I don’t need to step inside the Chinese Theater or trip over Paula Abdul’s star of fame while locating big white letters in the hills to know where I am. It’s not necessary to stray far from break-dancing Regae musicians on the boardwalk and dip toes in the Pacific to know what coast I’m on. Need only close my eyes and listen to the dull roar of naive dreaming, mine included, to know I’m here. It sounds a lot like a plane’s engine. And weightless, we soar off the runway to fly back. Vacation over.
[Cross-Dissolve] RUNWAY to HIGHWAY . . .
Exactly one week after completing that last summer class, a rearview frames my old home, my parents home. I don’t waste time getting gas for fear of permanent stagnation, not a second to hesitate before merging on I-64 West. There are stops along the way, a belligerent farewell to my alma mater, an anxious night on a otherwise decent hotel mattress, and even here, Austin, TX–a stop spanning 18 months so far. But, it’s important to remember, for me to remember, that this is just a stop, the last stop on the way.
[Fade out]