In China, Beijing. When I was eighteen years old.
It was two in the morning. Early enough for nobody to be around. I was walking from my sister's apartment back to mine ( a mere two three blocks, no more). It was a strange experience for me to have the quiet, calm tranquility without the streets packed full of people.
There was no-body.
My sense of ease turned to fight or flight when I noticed seven (or was it eight?) cigarettes dangling off the side of a crack in the pavement before me. In a place like Beijing most strange things become normal and that's when you start second guessing yourself.
"What are these cigarettes doing all by themselves?," I asked myself, "when they were obviously just lit by somebody, and yet, there is nobody around to be seen?!"
(yes I am talking to myself at this point and besides who cares when nobody is around)
As I approached their resting place I examined more closely the perfection in which they had been placed. Embers burning like perfect cherries ripe and ready. Almost full for harvest and yet the question pulled me in...why, where, how, who...would just place these there so perfectly...with no reason...and no trace?!
There was nobody!!
I felt the hair on my arms and the back of my neck begin to prickle up
When suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a dark figure moving down the corridors of the empty street. A black car. Fancy. And from out of the car window came a voice through an amplified speaker phone uttering something mumbled and indeciferable.
I froze inside. Thinking they were talking to me because I was the only one around! I kept on walking, pretending like I did not see them, while in the meantime paranoias floated through my imagination. I was just waiting for somebody to come out of that black vehicle to snatch me away into the back seat...and then...who knows what?! Off I go to some sex trade? Another missing person? Why not me? Is it just that easy? and could it happen to me? Anything can happen here. Anything can happen anywhere!
As I continued walking I pretending that I didn't see the black car, cigarettes , amplified voices speaking through the car window or a woman walking towards the black car from my peripheral vision. It's just ALL too strange. I can hear the sound of the car speed off behind me. I know that what happened was real. and yet...and yet why...?
The woman did not look like a prostitute, but, I think she must have been. How elegant, how business like. How...strange.
And WHAT about those seven (or was it eight?!) cigarettes!!!!?
I just couldn't figure it out. I still cannot figure this out! The silence. The cigarettes lined up. The black car. The woman.
So I just sighed and kept on walking "home"...
When I reached my apartment, I felt i kind of sense of relief...but not really because this place was a hole in the wall. There was no door, no proper door, just "a hole in the wall!"...and yet...security guards out front, go figure!! But yes, it makes perfect sense because if you have the security guards...who needs a door?
Not even stairs to walk through the front door, but a ramp. Something like what you would imagine cattle walk up to get into their stalls. Anyways, as usual, I stamp my feet to get the automatic electric lights going. Looking up at the dim ceiling, dangling with wires, unfinished walls crumbling like sand, and graphitti carved into their soft edges. Dry wall. I almost forgot the word for unfinished walls...the layer underneith...is...Dry Wall.
The elevators were closed. Without the "elevator lady"...(a specific job designed to guarantee your floor number entered for you)...I was left to use the staircase. A first for me, since I had arrived.
Why did I stay up so late!??? I had never felt so creeped out in my life!
To my surprise and anxiety the lights where off. Of course! Why would the lights be on!? Again: Beijing, China. Anything is possible. I had to walk sixteen floors in the dark. "Woohoo", I thought, "I'm not afraid of the dark" and then there was that small dark voice saying " Oh but you are", in the back of my mind taunting me.
The only light I saw guiding me was the light the that crept in from each small square window, from each door, on the next level. I followed this light like it was something Celestial. Holy. The only thing keeping my clumsly, sleepy steps in place...
I climbed eleven floors and by this time i started to get very tired. Although, no longer afraid of the dark staircase... and then.... and then... just when I was thinking "what a weird night, I am so done with China. I am so done with this Fucking-Circus-Of-A-Place. I just want to sleep!"
Then when I reached the eleventh floor I started to read all over the walls " KEEP GOING, KEEP GOING, KEEP GOING, KEEP GOING..." All the way it was written from the 12th to 13th floor! (and this is in English!? haha)...at this point I am laughing because reality is totally fucking with me. It's written in red spray paint. When I reach the top of the the thirteenth floor, which is completely illuminated, by the way...(the lights are somehow functioning after this point)
...I read "KURT COBAIN" , again in red spray paint. On the thirteenth floor, in English... are these words...
I am rubbing my head at this point...
At this point...I really just want to get to my mattress on my floor...in my apartment... my temporary "home"...and fall ASLEEP.
The lights remain lit until I get home. Three staircases of light. "Thank you!"
Until I finally arrive at the sixteenth floor where I unlock the gate that leads to a hallway that leads to my door- I open the door go to my room and collapse onto my mattress and I fall asleep.
And in the morning wonder.... "Was all of that real? Did that really happen last night?"
But I know it did. Although I'm still trying to figure out what it means. Maybe it means nothing?
For the rest of my life those sequence of events, in the order in wich they occured, will haunt me.
I guess the moral of the story is: " KEEP GOING"...maybe it IS ... Just. That .Simple.
Maybe IT just Is what It Is.
Conclusion:
Even if nothing makes sense, even if your climbing staircases in the dark, even if your tired and confused...
You will make it home, and you will rest...and this is....the eternal and very real state of "NIRVANA".
