A Very LA Morning

The most peculiar thing happened on my hill run this morning. 

I was listening to a chapter of The Untethered Soul about the voice inside our head. It went on and on and on about that incessant, annoying, nagging, unuseful voice that never stops talking and commenting on the world around us. 

The book continued by pointing out that even when you sit down to relax and watch television, there the voice goes again, commenting on everything you see on the screen, That girl with the red hair looks just like your ex wife. That awful woman, and all of the terrible things that she’s ever done to you. 

As I huffed and puffed up the hill it became too much. I needed a break from the voice inside my headphones mimicing that nasty, horrible, incessant voice inside my head. Phewf, went the voice inside my head. Now it could hear my its voice talking. 

Maybe the voice inside my head wanted me to turn it off because it hated being spoken about so disparagingly, and it came to its own defense.  Whatever, I thought. Think about something else!

As I ran with the noise turned off, I overheard bits of conversations from the people walking up the hill.

One middle-aged man said to another, “I'll admit my judgment hasn’t always been the best, but I did try to warn her about this! ”

Then, two young boys in their 20s, “You gotta let yourself rest man. Like take care of yourself, yeah, but you don’t always have to be working out.”

I got to the lookout at the top of the mountain, and there was a couple having an animated argument. This is incredibly awkward, I thought. They were arguing in private until I came up. I would have loved to go and sit for my meditative moment. With any luck, if they had any sense, they’d stop as I approached them.
I caught the man’s eye as I walked to the bench.

The woman who had her back to me was flailing her arms in the air, “Are you seriously doing this right now? You have to be kidding me. I can’t believe this is happening. Why would you do that? What are we going to do now?” 

As I passed them to sit down, the man picked up his backpack and walked to face the other side of the mountain, about ten feet behind me. I couldn't see him, and his voice became very faint. 

She, on the other hand, kept going, “Where are you going? Come on. I’m sorry. Maybe I overreacted, but that’s because you questioned my integrity.”

What a shame, I thought to myself. That the woman would take on all of the blame and put the burden on herself, in order to fix whatever trouble they were having.

And, do people actually talk like this? In the heat of the argument, she enunciated every word clearly and slowly. It was like they were talking in a code. Am I in danger? I thought. Was he going to pull something on me? Was this pretend argument all part of their plan, to play the quarreling couple, as a way to distract the first lone runner from something more sinister?

Whatever was going on, something wasn’t right. I felt my senses heighten. I felt a droplet of sweat roll down the inside of my arm. I had my headphones in but I was listening to everything they were saying. I heard a shovel digging up dirt somewhere in the close vicinity. From that vantage point, I looked down like a hawk peering over little groupings of ants that walked in twos up the trail in their floppy colourful hats. 

Should I leave? If I were to leave then, would I trigger the event prematurely? Would he be forced to act on their plan so that they didn’t lose the opportunity? Perhaps I should wait. It seemed like, in her code, she was urging him to reconsider.

I stayed seated. It was just too entertaining. What if I die today? I guess it is my time. 

“Come on,” she said, “Let’s go. Let’s just go and sit together. Feel the fresh air. We don’t even have to talk. Let’s go to the quiet place.”

What the hell was she talking about? Was that not a “quiet place?” Did I not just go up there and find them all alone on the top of a mountain? Why didn’t they sit together in silence then? 

“Come on.” 

“Alright,” he said, “I’ll do it.”

And then they relaxed. Whatever weird energy was happening between them was released. Their shoulders loosened, their body language became more natural, they sat down beside each other in a casual, normal way, like humans would.

She said to him, “Okay, good job. We just missed that one word. Cynical.” 

They laughed. “We made it all the way to the last page, though.”

I got up, thoroughly amused. Good show. I walked down the rocky part of the hill as they flipped through their scripts.

As I made my way down, a threesome ascended.

“...even recognizable actors from TV are driving ubers right now.”

“Gary said he was going to put his place up on Airbnb.”

I ran down, fast as I could, catching bits of other peoples’ conversations. 

Two men,“It gets to the point where you have to look at your entire life and ask yourself, what is it that I’m unhappy about?”

I ran home, past a man changing a tire next to the homeless encampment. It was definitely not his car.

Past the mural on the side of a liquor store that says, All great adventures start with a dream.

#OnceUponATimeinHollywood