Mindful

He buckled his belt and looked into the mirror, making sure that his hair looked nice, his face was clean, and that there were otherwise no problems with his features. He went through this routine daily, of course, but something about this evening proved to be different. An unusual lightness could be felt in the air, as if a vacuum removed all impurities and weight. His heart was fluttering more rapidly for another guy than he had ever remembered. A romantic interest. The first in a while, definitely not the usual Mr. Right, but the sort of figure one finds so attractive because of imperfections and the intrigue that builds from them. As he looked into the mirror one final time, he saw the exterior he may have wanted to see—bright blue eyes, clear skin, the unmistakeable happiness—but internally, he realised the mess he was faced with. Everything about his exterior may have suggested a person confident and at ease, but a million questions exploded in his head like a whiz-bang fireworks display. What if I say the wrong thing? What if I am not what he looking for? Do I really look good physically or am I just delusional? And so on, as each question he tried to answer only created another one until he was sufficiently nervous.

As he walked out to his car, the internal confusion only continued, increasingly intense with each beat of his heart. If it were any other night, or any other person, he might have just walked back inside and curled up with the latest volume of one of his arts subscriptions, but something about tonight was different. Having had a long series of romantic failures, and the all too frequent nights alone sipping a glass of wine and reading a book, he wanted something new, the personal change that he had long talked about but never tried to enact. It wasn’t as if he had never wanted to change before; every single day he wished to be the better person he imagined so easily in his mind. If he had the means, he would have packed up his bags and moved to one of the cities of his dreams—San Francisco, Portland, Boston or New York City. But as a struggling graduate student in college making a meagre income from a 25 hour a week job, that was simply not possible. So he was trapped in the city he liked to call ‘a broken dream’, New Orleans, because it is where he found himself back in his undergraduate years, and it was the only place he knew to be outside of his home in the Midwest.

It was not that he didn’t try his damnedest to push for change around him. He was active as much as he could be, considering his schedule. And while he enjoyed the milieu of the city—the way in which the uneven sidewalks cast shadows in the moonlight or how the trees seemed more imposing than the buildings themselves—there were limits to his happiness. All around him, that strong sense of brokenness pervaded the air. High per-capita crime rates, people still in trailers from Katrina, the chocolate of the city ignored for the vanilla, bitter stinging anger still fresh on faces, and no real movement or purpose. He thought about how there were lots of promises. He paused and thought again yes, lots of promises but nothing real, no action, as if the engine of the action was old and ragged. With these discarded promises, there was a sense that opportunity was lacking for him in the city. While there may have been a vibrant arts scene that channelled every powerful emotion into something healing and transformative, there was nothing there for him. Not the type of lifestyle that he wanted to live. Not the type of art that he wanted to do. Only the uncompromising feeling of being trapped in a void—heartbroken, uneasy, and uncertain.

He chuckled at how naïve he had been when he first welcomed himself to the city and Tulane University. He never really wanted to go to the university itself, feeling it was overpriced and lacklustre, but he went for the city, for the lights, and instead came to find darkness. But it was that option or going back home, and too many haunts were there to find any comfort. With a startling abruptness, his phone rang. Looking down at the number, he saw it was the guy he was going to meet. His heart fluttering, he picked up the phone.

“Hey…I am doing well, thanks. How about you…Oh, okay…is it a problem? No, of course not. I need a few extra minutes to get ready myself…See you soon!” and he clicked the off button on his phone.

His date was running about fifteen minutes late, an idea that normally would have annoyed him, but was welcome in that moment. He had fifteen more minutes to process thoughts in his stormy mind; fifteen more minutes to try and quell any bit of nervousness and self-consciousness he may have felt; fifteen more minutes to abandon the thought that he could never find a guy that worked well for him. Instantly, he was thrown back to why he never seemed to move anywhere romantically. It was not without having making efforts, but he never seemed to move beyond failure. Since love was inexpensive, free even, his financial resources were not holding him back. Perhaps it was something else, he thought as he put the key in the ignition, perhaps it was something more powerful and difficult to escape. A single word entered his mind: fear. But what? What was he fearful of? He had a nimble intellect, the fiery eyes, a top-notch education. And yet he was still afraid. Of what? This time the question was more urgent; it demanded an answer and would not leave his head until it got one. Thank God for fifteen extra minutes! And he began to drive away.

The traffic, usually heavy at this hour, was the lightest he remembered seeing it in a while. While he could have easily gone down Claiborne Avenue, he always ended up choosing St. Charles, if for nothing else but to see the mansions. This evening they seemed particular fitting, illuminated by old-fashioned gas lamps and an emaciated moon casting a little light on the perfectly manicured lawns. What was he fearful of? He had tried to push the question out of his mind by focusing on the grandeur, but it was a stubborn houseguest that would not leave until any and all means of exposition had been exhausted.