TheBanyanTree: Blips

[Monique Colver]

            Now and then, when the weather’s right and the air smells of
spring, that particular scent that reminds us that we’re temporary while
nature continues, I remember that particular April as if it were yesterday,
though it was many years ago. A lifetime ago. Time has immeasurably marched
by, and though there are some things that are best left forgotten, they do
not lie quietly dead. Instead, they see their opportunity and return,
lighting their way among neural pathways we thought were dormant. Telling
them to go away has no effect, thinking of something else, anything else,
does not work, for even as my thoughts move onward to today’s tasks, or what
I should be doing at this one moment in time, the scent of the air and the
light of the spring sun keep at me, and it’s as if I’ve moved back in time,
as if I am that person again, the person I left behind and can barely, most
of the time, remember. 

            When I was 18 I knew everything and nothing at all once. I knew
myself, what I was capable of and what I was not, and I knew that I had to
leave home. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. It didn’t matter,
it had to be a better alternative. There had to be a better way. By the time
April came around I was living on an Army post in California, close to the
ocean, a veritable paradise where within we kept our closely guarded
military secrets just that, and where without we played in the spring air,
the green grass, the smell of the ocean so close we could fall asleep with
it. We were young, and immensely stupid, or at least naïve, and while some
of us worked hard at developing the skills we were meant to be working on,
others of us spent far too much time drinking and abusing our newfound
freedom, an activity which could greatly hinder one’s learning ability.

            Russian was my language. I leapt into it forcefully with just a
bit of trepidation. I’d never been remarkably good at any languages, save
English, and even that would trip me up badly whenever the teacher would go
off into that dark shadowy area known as the “parts of speech.” But Russian
was where they wanted me, instead of my original choice of some sort of
obscure electronics, so to Russian I went. The first thing I learned, the
making of the letters, the curvy Cyrillic lettering, I loved. Learning to
write wasn’t our primary objective, and neither was speaking Russian. Our
primary objective was to learn to listen to Russian and to understand it, to
know when there was something important being said, to know enough to alert
someone that here, here we had a problem, or that here, here was someone
talking about something that someone in our government should know about,
whatever it might be. Comprehension was our primary objective; speaking and
writing Russian was only a byproduct of the primary objective. 

            In our off hours, when we weren’t in school being taught by
Russian nationals who’d fled their country only to end up here, teaching the
American military how to understand them, we were supposed to be studying.
We were issued clunky tape machines to have in our rooms, to listen to
endless Russian tapes and to transcribe what was said. To practice, to
learn, to get better. Some of us took that a step further and assured
ourselves that by having active social lives we would learn even faster, so
we spent our off hours drinking, shopping, going downtown to restaurants,
and coming back too tired, or too drunk, to study at all. For those who had
a natural affinity for language, and Russian in particular, this was not a
problem. For others, perhaps a bit more so. For many of us, it was the first
time we’d been on our own, that we’d had the freedom to decide what to do
with our time when we weren’t working, and we didn’t know how to handle it.

            The beaches at that time of year were beautiful and cold. Often
sunny, occasionally rainy. One evening I had dinner with a student of
Korean, part of the circle of friends and acquaintances I belonged to, a
Navy recruit who was madly deeply in love with a classmate of mine who
wouldn’t give him the time of day. She called herself an actress, and she
was adorable in that actressy way that 18 year old actresses have, and she
was focused on her Russian, or her acting, or something other than the Navy
recruit who wanted her to be madly in love with him. So the two of us had
dinner at a Korean restaurant right off post that was run by real Koreans,
and the kimchi was fabulous. I’d never had it before. I wasn’t, after all,
studying Korean, but Russian, so my favorite food was, well, Mexican, but
the kimchi was just what I needed that day. 

            After dinner, and a few drinks, we hopped on his motorbike and
headed to the beach to watch the sunset. Everyone was at the beach to watch
the sunset. It’d been a cold clear day, and the setting sun was a giant
orange ball, and if we’d been ten minutes later we’d have missed it. The
ocean consumed the orange ball of flame and then it was suddenly dark, and
the waves lapped lazily against the shore. So quiet in theory, the air full
of unspoken thoughts, the Navy recruit thinking of his obsession, me
thinking of . . . what? I don’t know. Perhaps my own obsession, the Army NCO
from the nearby Army base who’d shipped out to Panama a couple of weeks
earlier who had dominated all of my time for several weeks.

            We stopped at the NCO Club on our way back for a few more
drinks, and after we parked at the Navy barracks where he, for the time
being, lived, we climbed up to the roof by way of a safety ladder, and
around the roof to the side of the building, and into the room he shared
with another friend of ours. Women were not allowed in the men’s rooms, and
men were not allowed in the women’s rooms, and we were not to mingle in this
manner, but rules were made to be broken, weren’t they? We spent the night
giggling in his bunk, our friend below us asking us to be quiet, he had
school in the morning and wanted to be awake for it, which made us laugh
even more. In the morning, as the sun was rising and the grass was wet with
dew, we climbed back out the window, and around the roof to the ladder, and
he walked me back to my barracks, where I was meant to be sleeping soundly. 

            We said goodbye, for it was to be my last day on post. At the
end of the day I was to get on a plane and fly off to my next assignment, a
failure at Russian, though I loved it so, and he had wanted to take me out
to dinner for my last night on post. He couldn’t take me to the airport, for
he had only a motorbike, but he’d wanted to do that much for me, and so he
had. It helped, having friends who would take the time to say goodbye
properly. I wished him well, he wished me well, and we said we’d stay in
touch, though of course we never did. 

            That evening I sat at the airport, after having been dropped off
with all my worldly possessions. At this stage of my life everything I owned
could be carried in a few suitcases, and there was nothing else that I could
lay claim to. I could take my luggage and disappear, and nothing at all
would remain of me anywhere, for that was all there was to me. I waited for
my plane. I told the friends who had dropped me off to go, there was no
sense in waiting. They weren’t really my friends at all – my roommate knew
someone who knew someone with a van, so rather than have me take a taxi
they’d brought me to the airport, so waiting seemed pointless.

            I sat alone in the airport, my ticket in hand, wondering what
sort of place I’d find myself next. I wasn’t ready to leave yet, only
because I had nowhere to go. I wasn’t to show up at my next assignment for a
week, but they’d released me in order to give me a week to make the drive
from Monterey to Alexandria. Since I had no car, this seemed rather
ridiculous, but I was in no position to argue. Instead I would spend a week
in limbo, hiding out from my family, waiting for the next phase of my life
to begin.

            The Navy recruit showed up to see me off. He kissed me goodbye
extravagantly, actress or no, and as I boarded the plane he watched me go,
the merest blip in the story of his life, and he a blip in mine.