Posted 10:51 AM by hx

a little night ramble
i didn't post yesterday so here's a longish one to make up for it :) in a minor reversal, i actually wrote this for Broken first, and now i'm cross-posting it here. hope you don't mind :)

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whenever i go out at night, something odd is bound to happen :)

this is a tale i may work into one of my short stories some day.

i was out at a goth club and stayed till maybe 1 or 2am. i was in one of my deathwish moods, so i decided to take the bus back instead of calling for a cab. the bus wasn't coming any time soon, so i kept on walking, on to the next stop, and the next. strolling down hollywood boulevard. it was a pretty night, and i love the sleaziness of that road, so it was a pleasant walk. i love looking at the people who come out to play at night :)

finally i stopped at a corner junction and sat down to wait for the next bus. i figured it would be about time for it to arrive soon. i was alone there for a while, then some other people joined me to wait. no one spoke, we all minded our own business. i sat there thinking thoughts of night, watching the streetlights and the passing cars.

after a while, someone new came down the walkway and approached the stop. he was a very tall rastafarian-looking guy, by which i suppose i mean dreadlocks and a particular sweet smell :) i observed him for a while and he seemed harmless enough, very friendly. he knew a lot of the people who were hanging around the street, and they were greeting him and shooting the breeze with him.

after a while he turned from them and came towards me. i was still seated on the bench. i was thinking hard and didn't realize he was talking to me for a while. then his words filtered through and i looked up. he was saying, "i thought i was dreaming! walking down the road and i see my beautiful japanese butterfly, my butterfly all in black..."

i looked around and figured out three seconds later that he meant me, so i smiled and he sat down and we started talking. his name was... i'll call him Mykel here :) he had a bagload of stuff that he'd made, which he sold on the streets. he was actually not bad looking. maybe in his thirties, it's hard to say. there was something ageless about him.

his work was pretty good... a carved flute, carved jewellery... he wanted to give me a bracelet he'd made and i refused it. i wanted him to sell it to a tourist and get some decent money for it; it was very pretty. he told me his life story, and his plans for his future. i don't really remember the details anymore, i think i was tripping on the entire sequence like a dream :) there may have been something about a farm :)

eventually the bus arrived around 3+am. we talked till it came to a stop, and he gave me his card with his address on it, asked me to pay a visit some time. he lived in one of the hotels in the area. i had the card lying around my apartment somewhere for the longest time, but i don't know where it is now anymore. i have a feeling i threw it away in the end. no, i didn't go visit. it would have been an interesting experience, but you have to be in the right sort of mood for that kind of thing :)

the bus was surprisingly full. comfortably so, i mean, there were seats left over, but it was still more full than i expected at 3 in the morning. the atmosphere was different, too, in an indefinable way.

people were more relaxed, friendlier. it was actually much nicer than the daytime crowd, which i found perversely amusing. passengers were striking up conversations with each other - some young men teasing a pair of girls who looked like they were on their way home from clubbing, a couple of older men talking about world war 2 of all things... one of them turned to me during a pause and asked me where i was from. not the sort of thing i usually reveal to strangers, but he actually guessed right on the second try, which amazed me. most people here assume i'm hispanic, or filipina, or japanese :) turned out he'd travelled in the area when he was younger. maybe navy or something, i forget.

it's interesting, what the military does for young people in this country. i guess it really does give them a chance to see the rest of the world, something they wouldn't otherwise get to do.

i haven't been out that late at night here in a longish time, since this particular story took place. back home i used to go out a lot. i liked walking around late at night, looking for deserted spots to sit in and think. maybe because it's always so crowded back home, so full of people. the dead of night was always the best time to find a little peace and quiet.

here i go to the roof of my apartment building. it's taller than the other houses in the area, and i have a pretty good 360 degree view of the LA basin. i can see the hollywood sign, downtown, sometimes the sea on a clear day. the night makes everything beautiful.