I had one of those annoying post-breakup moments last night while taking a walk on 4th Ave.

To set the scene…I’d gotten some work done and destroyed other work. As far as productivity went, I seem to have broken even.

I left Epic and decided to take a walk on a wonderful summer evening in Tucson. Cool, vibrant, with just the hint of possible rain in the air. How wonderful Tucson smells at those times. At least until you get to the area around the underpass of the trains on 4th or 6th Ave. Man, that smells like a neverending stream of fetid Schlitz soaked urine.

Not many people out, mostly desolate streets, and I passed the brother of the husband of the One-Who-Has-Moved-On mentioned in WAY too many places on this website these days, not once but twice. I’ve seen him perhaps three times in the past year and tonight it was twice within the hour.

Heading back to my car trying to figure out whether I wanted to go to a bar to get a few beers, or to find a guy who I recently met who’s doing a 24hr long bicycle race to see if doing a little documentary on him might be a fun idea, or to go home and try to crank through a video project that’s been languishing for a year, or to just go home and go to sleep since I never seem to actually sleep anymore.

I ponder that really cute waitress at Bison Witches who looks like every Italian girl I grew up with, in that old mafia neighborhood in Queens NYC where news trucks would come every few months when some mobster or other was gunned down and we’d stand in the street behind the reporter waving at the world. Girls who would never think to pay any attention to me being the short, fat, way too smart, 12 year old with THICK glasses I was, so thick the glasses once accidently stopped three stray bullets meant for a mob boss when I wandered into a hit while playing Army. I stop by and ponder a pint or two of Bridgeport Copper which is quite tastey but nothing feels right so I move on.

I ponder sitting at Che’s and writing about tragedy and rebirth in the screenplay I never quite get to but think about all the time. The crowd oozing that weird Tucson slacker/hipster thing I don’t quite dig, seems hostile and I move on.

I ponder pizza, I ponder beer, I ponder combining the two in a kind of smoothie drink. “You love pizza! You love beer! Now get the drink that puts them together! Beerizza!” Brooklyn Pizza won’t make that for me and I move on.

I ponder making tortellini in a kind of red wine vinegar sauce with some red pepper flakes, garlic and a lot of oregano, some peas and some carmelized onions and think that might be tastey. Then a shiny object catches my attention and my culinary desires move on.

I look across the street to the still open B-Line. They make some simple and tastey food that I think I can do much better. But they run a restuarant and I make bland food for fat healthcare workers so I should just shut my stupid mind. I move on.

I ponder going back to my office, to Epic Cafe, to fix the website screw up I made earlier and glance to my left and see…her…the moved on one… across the street fixing her pant leg.

“Huh…that’s Natalie!” At that same moment she glances up at me, appears to have a similar moment of recognition and seems to think, “Huh…Scott.” And then she moves on.

That was the eighth or ninth thing on the list of “last things” I expected to see. The last thing I expect to see might have been Elvis in a miniskirt juggling flaming kittens. “Charlie Hodge! Get me some water and a scarf for my testicles, man.” Close to the last thing, since she never seemed to want to go out when she was with me and the very thing seemed anathema to the explanations I got from her about her obvious emotional distancing. Such is life I guess that people explain how they want themselves to appear. That if we can convince enough people to believe what they know in their hearts ain’t right, then you’ve got power, you’ve got them by the balls. [That's a paraphrase from Sin City, by the way. And not a reference to Elvis' balls in a miniskirt.]

“Huh…I should say hello.” And was about to run after her to say hi. Then the thought flashed that I’d look like that pathetic guy who keeps trying to meet the ex. That pathetic stalker guy who shows up wherever the ex is, at a club, at her job, in the bathroom, trying to make small talk like it’s no big thing and everything is a-okay. Superrific even.

She didn’t stop to say hi. I don’t need to look like even more of an ass than I already do. Fuck it. I moved on.

That’s the moment, the chance encounter.

What I thought was most curious was the instant intense pulse of suddenly feeling the hole in my heart again. Something I hadn’t thought about since last week. That same old feeling of intense emotional loss all condensed into that split second of recognition and then that even splitter second on thought about what to do and all the face saving rationals.

The grand comedy is that you want the other to feel the loss and the pain that you do but they never do because they moved on. So all you can do is say fuck it, suck up that moment, live and hold onto that feeling of life for a moment, walk back to your truck, and move on.

[A small aside:

I seems that everytime I have one of those moments with Natalie, or more precisely ABOUT Natalie since we never really had the moments together, there is one of those grand Tucson rain storms with the explosive thunder and lightening and torrents of monsoon rain.

Rationally, I understand that this is just a figment of perception and consciousness. That I’m just feeling this shit and sitting down and thinking about it and then while I’m thinking about it being hyperaware about my surroundings, which, in Tucson in the summer typically means storms. That there was a grand rain storm last week that I had danced in and nary a thought of Natalie happened before or after. I was just happy being a kid again. Or maybe being a kid for the first time.

Then there are the moments like when I saw her across the street and all that instant condensed emotional pain purifies itself and becomes a moment that is maddening. And then it seems Tucson is battered by rains when it does.

Funny how a confirmed skeptic and science fan who reads The Edge website and constantly rails against the mystical traditions that obfuscate and confuse reality will start to grasp at all possible meaning in that crazed moment. Funny how little of what you conceive as you is really you when the story you tell yourself is challenged or is simply blinded by stronger emotions.

More curious is that I couldn’t write about anything until July and it was so obvious that she was gone. And now my mind is free.

Even more curious is that my first instinct is to share this with her and even more and more curious is that she couldn’t care less.

People are baffling, there is no denying that. Others are a mystery and ourselves are blinded by ourselves. The bluebird hides in the corner terrified of the light. I sit at home, on my porch, shirtless, typing poinding, drinking a beer, and contemplating the rain, trying, failing, still trying, to move on.