We are all three of us basking in the sunlight, delightfully delirious from the previous night's reckless euphoria and soaking in the most perfect sunrise. Amanda has just had a shower and is facing the sun, drying topless with towel around waist, like a roman statue, or a greek one before that. I have claimed my wooden porch-throne in front of my two regal subjects: Ollie's two very wise-looking cats, one striped and one black. The finches in the aviary are asleep together in little feather balls, and it is quiet except for the turtles in the pond- ducking in and out of the water- ploop....plop.
It is an amazing moment. I have smoked so many cigarettes that I must sound like Tom Waits with a cold. I have laryngitis and it is strangely sexy. I am sitting, and staring, and smoking- and the cats are intently listening to what I have to say without words. Wise eyes locked. Intently listening for an infinite moment.
Ollie walks out onto the porch with a deformed orange that won't fall apart in any of the right ways. She sits next to me, and I dismiss my catmeeting and realize I've been crying this whole time. Tears drip out of me like an overripe fruit that can't hold itself together anymore. I've become a mush. I've become a mushy fruit and it is too late and I've lost all my lusciousness.
Ollie asks if I'm okay and I am crying and I say "Well, no! of course not-" and as I say this I start to laugh. The crying turns to laughing, and I think it's strange but I don't care- because suddenly the situation is really hilarious and ridiculous, and delightful.
I'm laughing so hard I have to hide my face. I feel like I'm going crazy. There's something heartbreakingly familiar about this sound coming out of my mouth. Ollie asks what I'm laughing about, and I just say, "I don't know. I'm so ridiculous!"
I am laughing at myself- uncontrollably- and suddenly, I remember the hundreds of times I've watched Nick do the exact same thing I was doing, laughing at himself, out of the blue, and not after an all-nighter.
I felt happy and sad at the same time. Sad that I'd lost him, but certainly happy to have acquired such a delightful, ridiculous habit from knowing him.
And now I remember something we'd brought up in all the nightspeak about the Thing with no word, that moment of infinite complexity and infinite simplicity. Amanda had said "I don't think there is a single word that encompasses Buddhism" and I shrug off the 'Buddhism' part because I do not like to use religious words, and say
'There may be no word, but there is something:', and I laugh.
And laugh.
And laugh.
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