Lost in Californiation

Part 1: California at Sunset (Sunset in California)

In autumn, the Golden Gate Bridge is often so immersed in fog that it makes you think you are in a wonderland, especially under the setting sun.
Standing on the sidewalk fence, lighting a cigarette and watching the setting sun can be addictive.
If you look under the bridge at this time, you can not help but have the illusion that the small human built a great bridge.
The Golden Gate Bridge in the clouds is as beautiful as Satan's smile and as solemn as God's altar.
That day, in this suicide shrine, Lily and I kissed for the first time.
It was the last Monday of summer vacation.
I remember that evening we went to a coffee shop and they were playing The Zombies Time Of The Season. I ordered a fajitsu and she ordered a cappuccino.
I sat in a chair outside the shop, looking at the brown autumn leaves, lighting a cigarette and deliberately not looking at her.
And she just kept looking at me.
The music emanating from the coffee shop was replaced by Danger In Loving You by Halie Loren.
That day, she asked me when I fell in love with her.
I answered, from the moment I fell in love with her.
Meaningless answers, like short life to the eternal universe, pale and powerless. She just looked at me like Gary Moore looking at his Gibson LP Standard 50S; It's like a hippie girl watching Jimi Hendrix Solo.
I looked at her and snuffed out my cigarette.

When I was lying on the beach in the afterglow, looking at her immersed in the afterglow, I suddenly remembered a poem -- Autumn Evening by Haizi:
The top of the fire and the foot of the sunset
The evening was gorgeous and supreme
Ripening in the sorrow of autumn
As the sun sets, fires burn and the red horizon rolls in
Make people heroic make people glorious and long life with the segmentation of the evening lamp
Prop up the body, in the pocket feel out a pack of tobacco, for their own roll on a cigarette, lit.
Lily looked back at me and said, "You know what? Sartre once said that cigarettes are nothing. "
I looked at her.
Turning away from the setting sun, her face was dark, like a goddess from the earth.
I read faintly: "Silence, whose elegy is it? The old man standing in the distance is whose future? Why does the Mississippi River stir? "
She smiled at me until the sun went down.
It is said that the greatest difficulty always lurks on the eve of success. The same applies to campus life. The week before summer vacation is always extra hot. While the professor was writing on the blackboard, Roy turned to me and asked, "How was your date last night?"
"It's all right." I smiled as I said that.
"Yo- bro! Roy laughed and crowed.
The professor turned and saw Roy's smiling face. He asked Roy to stand up and answer the question.
As I gloated, Roy predictably couldn't answer the question.
The professor did not intend to answer the question himself, but let me answer it.
After a lot of searching, I finally answered the professor's question.
After motioning me to sit down, the professor said, "I know you are all young, but if you want to be a good lawyer, you must listen carefully."
Roy and I looked at each other. He was such a prim professor.
The campus is always crowded in the afternoon, especially after class.
Roy and I walked to the station with our bags in our arms.
We shared an apartment off campus and commuted to and from school.
Roy watched a hippie riding a Harley-Davidson 883R emerge from the parking lot and asked, "Do you want to go on a trip? I mean this summer."
"Where to?" I asked, following Roy's gaze toward the receding Harley-Davidson 883R with Florida animal plates.
"The East Coast?
"East Coast for what?"
"I don't know. I might have to find a good reason to answer you. "Roy was joking half seriously and half jokingly.
"Well, tell me when you find a reason. "
Roy stood in front of an ashtray by the station, lit a cigarette and said, "I've been meaning to tell you something for a long time, but I've never found the right opportunity."
I felt out the cigarette case, lit a beforehand rolled good cigarette way: "What matter?"
"Why bother to find the meaning of things, sometimes do a thing, the process is the most precious." Roy waved his cigarette as if drawing music in the air.
"What if you end up with nothing?"
"At least you've been through the process. If you say so, life is nothing. We came with nothing and we left with nothing. Is it right that we shall all have nothing?"
"Do you mean, then, to do things without regard for the consequences? I mean don't count the gains and losses."
Roy stepped into the bus, snuffed out his cigarette, and got on.
As we made our tailgate stop, Roy uttered the Beat's famous line: "Why think about it? The golden continent lies ahead, and the unpredictable is waiting for you to amaze you and make you glad to be alive to see it. "
As I watched the underwear ads on Roy's head, I began to picture two hippies on Harley-Davidson or Native American Cruisers speeding down the highway.
"I didn't realize you were bisexual," Roy said with a smirk, following my gaze at the stout male model in the AD.
"Maybe." I don't want to explain, or subconsciously I agree that I am a closet.
"I don't believe in freedom. It's not so much that I don't believe in freedom as that I don't believe in freedom without a price. As rights and duties go together, so freedom is born with costs. It's like born free." "Roy said, sitting on the sofa with a glass of bourbon.
Mick gulped down half a glass of Scotch and said, "You mean, freedom comes with a price. Have you thought about it? "
I looked at Mick, who was dazed, and said, "Freedom is freedom of choice, broadly speaking. You are free to make your choices and take responsibility for them. This is Sartre's view of freedom, absolute freedom equals absolute responsibility. "
"Absolute freedom is another kind of infreedom. Because people are people in the society, absolute freedom bears absolute cost, and the cost is actually another degree of unfreedom. "Roy said as he felt for a cigarette and lifted the lighter lid, Mick refuted:" That is not a self-consistent understanding. "
"In fact, you need to know that absolute freedom is based on the spiritual realm. What Roy means by unfreedom is the material realm. "I added for Roy.
Mick seems lost in thought and leans back on the sofa.
I rolled a cigarette and pointed to the lighter in Roy's hand.
Roy knowingly threw me a lighter, pointed to Mick, and said, "Is she all right?"
I turned to look at her, lit my cigarette, and shrugged. I WAS ABOUT TO GIVE the LIGHTER BACK TO Roy WHEN I ACCIDENTALLY FOUND A RELIEF OF ROUTE 66 ON the LIGHTER AND said, "THIS LIGHTER IS PRETTY."
Roy took the lighter and said, "Carl gave it to me. He said a friend of his in New York made it for him."
"Carl? The hippie that Leon was talking about earlier? "
"Hippie? Is that how Leon describes him? "Roy choked on alcohol." Oh, Man! I'm telling you, Carl is going to kick Leon's ass. "
"So it's him? "I looked at Roy
"Hey! Of course it's him! Remember the guy who used to drive the Indian chief out front? "
I immediately pictured the Brad Pitt lookalike in a plaid shirt and jeans with a ram's leather belt, with wavy shoulder-length hair, sitting in a turquoise Indian chief with his hand on the handlebar.
"Remember him? Roy looked at me and smiled.
"Yes." 'I replied.
'Do you want to see him? Roy asked, flicking his ash.
"Yes," he said. "I promised.
"All right. You might see him at the after-school party. I can't guarantee that he will come. After all, Leon was right -- Carl is a hippie." Roy rubbed his temples and said, "Hey! Mick, are you okay? "
I poked Mick and said, 'Nope, completely drunk. "
"Oh, man!