Experimental/Hybrid Prose, Lola Heymann
i. Midsummer midnight
"Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it?"
No staying up till sunrise tonight
We've had our midsummers
Twice we got it right
But at least there was the sunset behind the Empire State Building
Yes I do miss the longest day of the year
ii. Conversations
Everything's been done before in New York. That's why it's so hard to find anything here, anything new and interesting you could make your own, because everything, everything, everything- it's been mentioned by someone. There's this emptiness, and even the emptiness I couldn't describe because Camus did a much better job with that already.
Me, I was thinking of my immortality, which I don't have, and my face cream, which I also don't have (they didn't sell the brand at the store, too cheap or too foreign).
On the bus back, an overheard conversation. A little girl (6 or 7 probably) and a woman, early 30s (not her mother, maybe a family friend?)
My favorite flowers are roses and daisies. I love daisies.
Pause.
Does your mother live in California?
Um, sort of. Most of the time. And my sister lives in Mexico.
Me, my mama and papa live in California too. And, where in, where in California do they live?
San Francisco.
And you live allll the way in New York?
That's right.
In Central Park I say I like the fake castle it's not really a fake castle it's just that it's not very old like a real castle, they have no real castles in America, I don't mind.
"But there's no magic in it" yes there is. Magic isn't just something you find, magic is something you create.
"Neuschwanstein is the best castle", I say, "because it's a vision, realized. What could be better than that?"
No, really, what could be better than a vision successfully realized? Well, perhaps realized is too big a word, I thought, walking through the Met, perhaps approximated, yes, coming close I guess is all we can hope for. Still, what could be better than a vision successfully approximated? That's more than most of us ever get. So that's why I love Neuschwanstein and that's why I love Las Vegas, the magic of creation, not just something you found on the ground.
A horrible thought, dying without ever having seen the west coast
"It really says more about you and how you interpret the movie than about the movie itself"
Ok so where do we go from there, huh? I didn't even question that Johanna dies, for me that was the whole point. So make of that what you will
iii. Campus
We are like Allen Ginsberg and Walt Whitman, you and I, walking around the campus at Barnard and Columbia, and as I put your book back on the shelf there in Barnard hall, 4th floor (wondering, of course, will they have MY books at UCSB 40 years from now, for the students of the new 60s) I try to find its place, putting it next to some guy named Hyman, missing the e but close enough, I think. Always close. So then I say we're done here and take the elevator back down and then we go out because sometimes it seems like that's all I know how to do. But you're still there with me, not only in New York, also in California, that big, beautiful, lonely Los Angeles and I feel that way about you and Allen Ginsberg felt that way about Walt Whitman and who will feel this way about me (always about me)? All I want, really, is a legacy and all I got are a couple of notebooks.
iv. Tourist
Returning as a tourist to a place where you used to live like a goddamn The Killers song. I used to go there I used to live here I remember this they changed the layout was this store indeed ever closed I used to take the bus down this road and up this road and back down this road I used to shop here it hasn't changed maybe it should have she still got it I'm just visiting it's just as I remember it hasn't been long but it's been ages. I feel better now so no need to be nostalgic except the mountains and the sea and the palm trees and the big empty roads! Staying the same when we know we can't. And last year I did a similar thing I walked all the way down the hill to town and bought a lot of books for a good deal and had good food and remembered and reminisced. And once again I don't think I could take being any older than forty something because imagine returning to a place you used to live and see it all changed (except for the mountains and the sea, of course, being the mountains and the sea), imagine someone else entirely doing the formula 1 interviews, imagine a whole lifetime of looking back, I think there's people who can take it and people who can't and I don't think I have it in me. And I don't have it in me to settle for less so I don't know where I'm headed but it can't be a very safe place (I'm headed to Los Angeles, merciless and terrifying and agonizingly beautiful).
v. Ok beat poem let's have it
California California California the sea the mountains the palm trees it feels like home but so foreign it's so big it's all spread out like bindweed and around every corner a whispered promise in the heady perfume of a summer night.
Me and Frank O'Hara, we were the daylight that was saved every year our birthday was a Sunday unless of course they didn't have daylight savings in the America of his time which I don't know enough about
So we're driving out of Newport at night listening to songs about driving and growing up while we're driving and growing up and it's all so damn cinematic I say I always misunderstood the lyrics thinking she said I'm biding my time when really what she's saying is I'm biting my tongue
"That's funny" she says and I like my version better
On Abbot Kinney Boulevard there was a Hawaiian necklace lying in the gutter next to dirt and broken plastic and I almost took a picture thinking yes, this, me and my father, we're in this somewhere, but I just walked on
Then on the drive to Redondo beach I thought it's right that they killed Marissa, it wouldn't have had the same lasting impact otherwise, and anyways there's nothing better than a tragedy starting out light hearted
vi. The LA
This city is always promising something it's sickening it's all glowwinggg the billboards the headlights the pools the windows the remnants of the fading sunset and there's always a show to join somewhere, everywhere, only the truth of the matter is I'm a coward I can't do it on my own I'm just not that brave I overestimate my presence in people's lives is all I can only reinstate I never discovered I'm not God most people realize this at about three years old I've heard, kind of along with gaining consciousness, but I'm stuck in my solipsism for good
"LA really is the city of inspiration" damn right it is so I've been trying to write to have at least something to show for it and god it's all so sprawling and glittering and terrifying how lucky I am to have a balcony so I can stare at it all night like Cinderella looking through the castle windows at the ball going on inside only of course she was brave enough to join the show all on her own
So I could make excuses, say I've tried before and it wasn't worth anything and why put myself through that, maybe I'll watch Breaking Bad in my hotel room instead acutely aware I'm wasting a perfectly good night and who wants that, I don't even wanna waste overripe bananas
So I could go and pay 20$ (it's always 20$) for a drink, Curious Jorge, one of their signature cocktails that doesn't even sound very nice but I never order based on ingredients, always based on names, place-names: the name, very evocative
But I don't drink on my own
I think drinking alone is a sign you've become an alcoholic and a pathetic one at that so I never drink alone because I'm not, pathetic I mean
Except that one time I was stuck in traffic for too long and there was a tequila bottle on the seat next to me the passenger seat it just happened to lay there so I chugged a bit of that because I hate being stuck in traffic which makes me think maybe I couldn't live here after all because I goddamn hate traffic
I'm watching the sunset gradually fade into dusky dusty blue it's my second favorite LA sunset I've seen here so far, not quite as Space Oddity (1969) as the last one
So anyways I could go downstairs to the famous bar which is apparently famous and offers signature cocktails for 20$ and I could have one of those the way I had the 11$ strawberry banana smoothie watching the sunset in Venice beach and it's probably gonna be 22$ or some shit after all because of taxes and I'd chug it quickly because I always do and 10 minutes would pass with no one but the bartender talking to me because they're too old I think they're all like 30 here or look the part and they wouldn't be like me inviting a girl on her own into their little gang as I do when I see one because yes I can be what I wanna see in the world but that don't mean I'll see it in the world y'know
So I'll stay up here there were fireworks briefly I think but just one that's kind of odd the sunset is gone it's all dusty blue now and the music from downstairs but I gotta add it's also somewhat cold (excuses, excuses) not at all like in New York where you never need a jacket in summer
vii. Tourist II
Return to Riverside Park where's there's ofc never anything to do except walking and not getting into tennis courts and reading names on benches (you can always make them fit somehow) and getting stabbed at night I suppose and eating ice cream and watching the Hudson River and taking a morning walk at six am really the best time of the day of all days of all times right in the middle of staying up 42 consecutive hours. So they didn't let me play at riverside park tennis club and I got thrown out of Heaven and one day I called up the devil and I called up the secret service and I'd do it all again so jot that down until someday I'll refuse something free even if I like it just to prove I've finally outgrown my father's limitations. Oh and yeah ofc the calling up the devil thing happened in Riverside Park too because where else really except maybe Barcelona and when she said there's that dog again I didn't make the connection but it was brown anyways and not black so most probably not the devil after all and it was just an automated voice anyways.
Back in Times Square I feel better than all the other tourists because while ofc I too am a tourist I know my way around because I lived here. I lived here! I spent the summer here and they're just here clueless walking around Times Square in the fast approaching fall we're headed for now and I think how I had a much better summer in New York than Nick Carraway.
Gin & peach & green tea & whisky
I write down on our last night out permeated by the underlying melancholy of imminent departure and we say goodbye as if we'll meet again but this WAS already meeting again. One last view of the Empire State Building but it's not the longest day of the year anymore, far from it.
Lola Heymann is a writer of fiction, poetry, and articles. She loves classic literature and her works deal with nostalgia and romanticisation a lot. Last year she got her Bachelor's in Liberal Arts and Sciences. So far, her work has been published in The Bottom Line, UCSB's university paper. When she's not writing, she enjoys fashion design, ballet, festivals, spending time with her cat and watching a lot of tv. Find her on IG @princessofstories.
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