Time Change… By Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture

November 10, 2011 Whitney Farmer 11 Comments

Whitney runs a rock music venue on the beach in L.A.. She has an M.B.A, and sets her clocks five minutes ahead.

While waiting for a stoplight today, a red and purple maple leaf dropped from the sunny sky into the front seat of my convertible.  The season has changed.

Over the weekend, one of my former security guards came by the club. Big John is about 6’5”, a mountain of muscle with a mad dog on-the-job poker face that makes him unrecognizable and terrifying to even me. His voice goes down an octave when he is working, and it makes people stop what they are doing with few words. Many times, I would see problems dissolve when he would simply walk onto the scene. He is what is meant when people say Big Dog, and he kept everyone safe.  I was attacked once in my office, and he took care of me.

Big John left to do security on film and television shoots. His new company was smart enough to throw him piles of money – more than we could – and I wasn’t surprised when he quickly got three promotions.  I told him that it is just a matter of time before he becomes a movie star. He looks like a prettier Michael Duncan Clarke.  When he came to see us, I could see the effect of a hefty paycheck. He looked wonderful, dressed beautifully, and has a new car.  He still has his sweet smile and gentle spirit intact, the same that he used to keep hidden when he was working.

One night at the end of the summer, he and Bone were walking me to my car in the parking lot at around 4 in the morning.  Walking by an awkwardly planted palm tree, we shook our heads when we saw a lonely and abandoned bikini bottom hanging off of a branch.  There was a story there that we could guess at but didn’t want to know that could be summarized by saying that the garment was now obsolete.  Like the red and purple leaf that had floated into my car, it belonged to the summer that was over. Time for a change. And sometimes ya gotta take something off before you can put something on.

On the morning after the show when I had seen Big John and seen evidence of his beautiful new life, Daylight Savings Time hit and I got an extra hour of sleep. After I got up, I got a call from church.  There was a group of gypsy pastors from France attending a conference there, and the Missions Department asked if I could help with translating. I told them it would be a rare privilege, but that everyone would need to forgive me in advance for being lousy at it. It’s been twenty years since I was fluent and used to dream in French.  An hour after the phone call from the Missions Department, I got a call from a bookstore announcing that they had found a French Bible that I had requested two weeks earlier. It had just arrived. I took it as a sign.

I spent the next two days with French gypsies.  At In-and-Out Burgers, I declared them to be honorary Americans because they had eaten Double-Doubles. We also went to Costco, and I confessed to them that I had never been before.  While there, the lead pastor Michel negotiated the purchase of four pallets of bath mats.  At first, I was concerned that my lousy French kept me from understanding what he wanted to do, or that he didn’t understand what was in the crates.  I assumed he thought that they were towels and tried to explain what they were. I think I accidently said they were Kotex. He patiently explained that he knew what they were, and that he intended to buy 500 of the bath mats.  He said that it was because the winter was coming, and that they needed them to help keep the trailers warm in the caravan community where they all lived.

The gypsies also shopped for Cosco bling: Beautiful taffeta dresses the colors of jewels for their little girls, jewelry of all kinds that is worn and passed down as part of an inheritance for a people who have no place to call home. They may have no hope of owning the dirt beneath the wheels of their caravans – like the majority of Southern California – but they do everything within their power to lead beautiful lives. Descendants from Egypt who were exiled by Nebuchadnezzar for giving sanctuary to the refugees of the fall of Jerusalem, or perhaps the family of Jesus when they fled the infanticide perpetrated by Herod…descendants of the Diaspora created from the Alhambra Decree whose lands were seized via Inquisition in order to enrich the Spanish Crown worn jointly by Ferdinand and Isabella…descendants of Indians who fled the invasion of Mongols into the Punjab…From wherever they had come, they are here now, full of joy and plans. They seemed to have found a narrow wisdom that propels them to create a better life while being happy in the midst of the one they are living now.

As I said goodbye to the gypsies, I made them a promise that in the future I would speak their language skillfully. They in turn promised that in the future they would learn how to surf. And then we embraced in a big pile rather than one at a time. When Big John said goodbye at the club, we embraced, too.  Then he drove away in his beautiful clothes in his beautiful new car into his beautiful new life.

Today, I started studying French again. What I will do with it and where will I end up using it, I don’t know.

Mais le temps est changé.

Quote of the Blog, from the Rolling Stones: “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometime you just might find you get what you need…”