The Fork in the Road.
We've all been there. Several times. Maybe you're not out on The Road as often or much as I, but you've certainly seen a Fork or two. Even if your Google Maps works better than mine and you felt you thought you knew what was coming over the next rise, you still have to take and make decisions on whether to turn right or left. Most often I only realise that I had come up to a Fork after the fact. This is when a route I take perhaps doesn't work out as I expected it to and after mentally retracing my steps, I become aware of the singular, fateful choice that is that one 'wrong-turn'.
But there are times when I know I'm facing a Fork at the very moment I come up to it. It is so clear, that in my mind I see it as a real scene. I am wearing a faded brown suit and an emerald green button-up-vest that are both laced with thick markings of dust that have risen up off the road and clung to the parts of the material that are most moist with sweat. My right shoulder is slumped down due the stiff, red leather suitcase that hangs from my right hand. Across my left forearm and cradled into my stomach, lies a bouquet of wildflowers, wrapped in a light, tracing paper. I don't know exactly how long I’ve been carrying this spirited melange of purples, yellows and whites and neither do I know whom they are meant for, but they seem as fresh and as lively as the ones still growing and attached to the ground around my feet.
I lean over to lay the suitcase down and look out in front of me. The side of the road I am on is a red-clay track with barren fields on either side. Once wheat and barley and rye grew proud and tall in these fields, but now they are long abandoned and unused. The two families that once tended to those crops have moved up north and separately – but very coincidentally – both operate shoe stores in Iowan strip malls that specialise in plus sizes.
I pull the dark, plastic sunglasses away from my face, fold then into the single pocket on the front of my vest and run my hands back across my short, buzzed hair. Until recently, locks of thick and black hung loose and down beyond my jawline, but desperate for any exercise of control, I had bought a pair of Wahl hair clippers and shaved the top of my head naked down to the skin. Since then, I had been maintaining it at a 'one' length, despite missing what once grew from there, as much as I still missed Her that had taken all that control from me.
Out in front, the road splits off into two different directions. One is laid out in the same even and flat, beige paving of the deserted and dream-like side streets of Hancock Park. It is smooth, inviting and feels vaguely familiar. Not in the way that makes me think I’ve been down it before, but in the way that reminds me of other roads I’ve heard you talk of. Reminds of stories you've told, that I only have your point of view for.
The other is thinner and darker and is made up of ancient, uneven, blue-stone cobbles. It sort of looks like one of those central Melbourne laneways, when dawn first bursts through and everyone has either gone off home or not arrived in town yet and it's just you and a creeping light and memories and expectations. I say sort of, for there are no towering buildings bracketing both sides of the way. Just more abandoned fields as far as the eye can see.
As I alluded to above, my Google Maps never seems to work when I need it most, so I don't bother to pull the Blackberry out from my trouser pocket. I just stare at the two roads and The Fork in front of me. I can clearly see my two options. I may not know exactly where they lead off to, but I do know that they exactly do that – lead off.
But the awareness of a Fork and this scene that accompanies it, does not play often. Particularly when a choice initially seems light and somewhat trivial and then later turns out to be critical and life changing. Mainly, I judge, consider and head off a direction, without any Robert Johnson inspired cinematic moments and only later become aware of the Fork I had turned out to be facing.
The last time I had a rare moment of being aware of a Fork as it was happening, was a while ago back in New York City. It was a Thursday night and well after midnight (these rare moments seem to only occur during weekdays and the wee-hours). I was standing on a 1st Ave sidewalk, down in the East Village. On my phone was a fresh text message inviting me to cross a bridge and in front of me stood an invitation to 'just lean in'. ('Just Lean In' refers to that moment just before you kiss a girl for the first time. On old flatmate of mine seemed to be always uncertain and lacking in confidence when it came time to execute that first kiss upon meeting/dating/bring home a girl. We coined that phrase as a mantra for him to focus on and to help overcome that hurdle. I believe it worked wonders for the young man....)
Time and the cabs racing past me froze still in a suspended pause, as my mind went to that place with the vest and the lilacs and The Paths and the buzz haircut. I knew clearly that this was a Fork. This was a moment when I was going to make a slight turn – either right or left – that would magnify out with time and change my outcome and My Road forever. I just knew it. I don't know how I knew it, but I just did. I also knew that this decision, despite it's inferred magnitude, had to be made fast. For, despite the fact that as I write this here today, I can tell you that time stood still, it of course did not and the social graces of that moment required an immediate choice.
I broke from the imagined dusty diorama in my head and focused on the girl in front of me. I had met her only a few months back and had been randomly and inconsistently getting to know her since. My first impressions of her were simply that she was charmingly self depreciating and unawares of her natural and great sensuality and attractiveness. Both these characteristic sucker me in every time. For whatever reason, I did not immediately pursue this piqued interest, but circumstances were such that we had cause to cross paths every week or so. For some other reason, I chose to not let on that I liked her – or to be more exact, that I 'liked' her. We were eking a platonic friendship of sorts, until this Thursday night that I followed her and her friend out to a crowded nightclub, hidden in the back room of an old-timey barber shop.
Earlier in the night, a very familiar routine of bait-and-switch had been played upon me by someone I once knew, which had only served to remind me that my 'whatever' and 'some other' reasons mentioned above, where perhaps neither founded, rational or justified and it was time to let them – and her - go. You can't hold onto water with just your bare hands and planning a future based upon this is gonna leave you mighty dry. I was tired of being dry. Today – Thursday – was going to be the day for moving on.
As we stumbled out of the bar, past the deserted hairdressing chairs and back out onto the streets of Alphabet City, I knew that at some point tonight, I was going to 'just lean in'. What would come of it, I did not know – would she reciprocate or repel - but that's the whole point of the mantra. You are meant to just act and not over-analyze. But then, as we walked west towards another bar and a continuance of the evening, I felt my BlackBerry vibrate with an incoming text message. In essence, the message I re-read three times, turned a 'bait-and-switch' into a 'bait-and-switch-and-bait' and I now had my Fork.
I could ignore the message and it's request and carry on the night with the golden haired girl with hazel eyes, thin eyebrows, soft and light shoulders, a tired, yet mischievous smile and a way of talking to me that somehow made me feel like I was standing with my head in the breeze and my feet in the sand of a Northern New South Wales beach and that it was all being captured on a black and white 60mm camera being operated by Richard Avedon. Or, I could turn the other way – left, as it were – and head off to attempt to once again catch the crashing surf in the palms of my naked hands - just as I had done and failed at before.
The choice I was about to make, I somehow knew would result in a massive divergence of how the months and years ahead would play out. A first step that would simply just be hailing a cab south to Brooklyn or getting into one that drawled across to the West Village, would end up with two played out journeys so different in outcome, that they would seem as told by two different people, in two different times, with two different sets of hopes and dreams.
How would I choose? Which one was the right way? And what the hell did 'right' mean here anyway?
The beige, lilting road of Hancock Park or the cobbled, grungy lane of Melbourne? Which one of those turns did I chose? And which way represents which girl? And – as you must always ask when reading any post on this blog – is any of this true or real?
Well...See.... I’m not gonna tell you. You might know or you might not. It doesn't matter. You see, I really only wanted to talk about forks today. Not what comes after them.
