张璐
Lu Zhang
aka Almaz

When I was flying across the Atlantic Ocean towards Sønderborg, the Scandinavian city five thousand four hundred and fifty miles away from home, the only thing I had on my hard drive was the movie “The Man without A Past”. I woke up at the seventh hour of the flight amidst some nebulous dream-like muddle, and was thrilled to find chicken flavored instant noodle soup in the airplane kitchen. I started watching the movie after sitting the noodles in hot water. 

A traveling man arrives at a new city by night, the man is not handsome or ugly, just a man. 

Ray said he did not want to watch the movie with me because he did not care for those countries up in the north, and Finnish people were weird, probably because of the cold. Ha - and he moved to the north-east coast with his ex - either he’s weird or he lied to me. 

The man is knocked down by three strangers after he falls asleep on a bench! So that’s how he loses his memory… 

I wished I could lose my past by some external force… I wondered if it would be easier if I could forget all about Ray all at once. I knew that between the two of us if anybody got to move on it’d have to be me to let go first… but not so fast even for me, except through some unexpected blow such as the one in this movie…“Beautiful and talented late singer - creative musician who writes - wrote her own songs - left us forever today after being attacked by three extremely wicked men while she was taking her afternoon siesta in the park.” - for example, illustrated by a few pictures of me performing on stage. The world is saddened… while the real me flying incognito to an unknown new life on a transcontinental flight, in search for my personal utopia…

The man cannot find a job because he does not have any documents of identify, not even a name.

As usual people try to help: “Why don’t you ask your family and friends?” 

Apparently in this world the past comes in the same package with basic security and comfort. So it does take some stupidity and/or extreme bad fortune to be able to start the journey for personal utopia. Not so grand scenario in my case, it was only a breakup - due to probably a certain combination of stupidity and bad luck. I was far from being deprived of my basic security and comfort: I was sure to get a job in Northern Europe with my contacts. The only thing I deprived myself of was probably the ever uplifting Californian sun. This little I could manage. But could he, Ray? He barely traveled. “The grass isn’t greener on the other side, Jen”, he used to mutter every time I planned a new trip, and look, he was keeping the comfort by holding on to his ex. 

I started slurping my noodles. They were not as good as I thought. For no reason, tears came down on my cheeks. I suddenly missed how Ray would cuddle with me on the sofa while we watched Netflix together. He would kiss the back of my neck and hug me from the back in his gentle yet forceful ways… 

I sipped some chicken flavored broth salted by my tears, continued watching the movie. If there’s any way to remove the past, it must start from my mind. 

The man was given an abandoned metal container to live in. He meets a woman he likes and she likes him back - not beautiful or ugly, just a woman. They start seeing each other, in their stiff and awkward ways. 

At some point I sank into salty slumber with the roaring engine gnawing on my nerves. 

At the eleventh hour of the flight I woke up again. Somebody had cleaned up my food tray. I resumed the movie. 

The man accidentally gets himself involved in a bank robbery. The bank robber, after taking only a handful of stacks of cash, locks him and the bank clerk into the vault. The two sit side by side with the backs straight, hands on kneels. They do not know what to do but stare at each other’s face. 

I thought what a couple of partners in crime they looked. 

I thought of Mike, how we got together, and how his presence was always there through out my whole relationship with Ray. It’s as if Ray got to play the good guy thanks to Mike! This truth dawned on me crystal clear when I was more than ten thousand miles up in the air. How childish we are! “Is he good or is he bad?” As a kid I used to vex my parents tirelessly with this question every time I watched a movie. But where do children get their ideas if not from grownups? Then we laugh at them for asking silly questions. As adults, we run into the arms of this one bitching about the meanness of the other, or the sadness of this situation, the annoyance of that circumstance. We make this person good by making that person bad. We make each other necessary by painting life darker. 

Up there in the clouds, in between countries, time zones, and identities, I saw the mess that I had made and the madness in it all… I saw that Mike was there because I wanted him to be in my life, whatever I said to Ray about him and however it looked like to other people… Ray must have known all of this from the start, yet he let me… the part of me that needed to make someone a bad person so that I could blame on him all my mistakes and crimes - the mistakes and crimes that no one but myself was judging me for! Ray was there for me; he got himself in the shit just to be my partner in crime! 

The bank robber turns out to be a bankrupt company owner. He shoots himself in the head after delivering the stolen money to his unpaid employees. 

I started crying again. 

Before long the lights went on, and the flight attendants came to open the window blinds. They were going to serve us breakfast before the landing. 

I squinted as I turned towards the window to receive the first beam of Nordic sunlight in my life. 

(End)