The inevitable boomerang

We sat outside on a bench. It was a chilly night in Los Angeles. There were black clouds in the sky smudging across the big white moon. We looked up at the moon.

I said, “It’s a full moon.”

He said, “Is it?”

I said, looking closer, “Now I’m not so sure.”

He said, “Yeah, I think that maybe …”

I said, “Maybe the left-hand side is a bit fuzzy – maybe it was full yesterday.”

He said, “Yeah.”

We lapsed into silence. The silence went on for a bit. We kept looking up at the moon.

He said, “When I look at the moon, I see it in 3-D.”

I said, “What do you mean?”

He said, “I don’t see it as a flat sphere. I see it as an actual ball in the sky.”

I said, “That’s really cool.”

We lapsed into silence. It went on and on and on. Nobody spoke. We just kept looking up at the moon. Nothing else was happening. It seemed that nothing else was supposed to be happening. What was happening was that we were sitting on a bench on a chilly night in Los Angeles looking up at the moon.

Suddenly, it was as though the air deflated out of him, all at once. His shoulders relaxed, his head kind of sank back, and he said, in a tone of wonder and surprise, “God, I am so mellow right now.”

I didn’t speak for a while and then I (the least mellow person on the planet) said, “Me too.” and I meant it.

Perspective requires distance. I do not have distance right now. I think of that moment of utter relaxation and shared silence and nothingness on that bench: at the time I had a moment of consciousness and awareness, of thinking, how extraordinary … that we would be so relaxed …. that we would be so mellow … here, now … it is rather unusual ….

But things never mean what you think they mean.

Now I can see that that moment was the moment before the boomerang.