The air-con was right above Lola's head and it was breathing at her legs. She pulled down her sweater to cover her ankles, curling up like a kitten in the snow, too lazy to move to another spot for a nap. The flightboard flickered through different schedules regularly, displaying the estimated time of arrival of the plane to Queenstown, New Zealand - there was still plenty of time to kill. Lola rubbed the haze off her eyes and looked over at her sister who was coiled up in the seats right opposite her. She took out a booklet from her carry-on backpack which she used as a pillow and turned to the page where a small sticker bookmarked - The Nevis. It was where they're heading and she was going to jump off The Nevis. This was one of the items on Lola's bucket-list that she wrote when she was 13. She's 25 now and she could finally cross out "bungee jump" from that list, even though she was a bit doubtful about the decisions she had made twelve years ago.
We all write silly to-do lists when we were young for the things we wanted to achieve when we are older, but as we age, we'd start to convince ourselves with limitations of actually fulfilling these lists. And Lola was no different from us. Until three years ago she had a car accident and went into a coma for almost two years. Fortunately, of course, she woke up. And that's why she'd decided that life was too abrupt to not achieve the things you wished to achieve while you had the chance to. Twelve years was a long time but here she was, holding a paper of bad choices of a 13-year-old, travelling with determination. And her sister.
It was nighttime when it happened. It was dark and foggy with a light drizzle. No one knew what was on Lola's mind and where she was driving to. The head of the car looked as if it melted into the lamppost, and it was somewhat of a miracle that Lola survived, even in an unconscious state. She had a dislocation in her left arm and a crumpled-up bucket-list in her right hand. That was the paper she was holding like a map now. On it was a list of simplified goals: tattoos, sea of stars the neon jellyfish, sky-dive, Sunset Boulevard, bungee jump... and so it goes. There was a few confusing items because they weren't specific enough, like Chinese, wedding dresses, kicking belly. Lola moved out when she was 20, so her parents had to flew all the way from Oklahoma to New York when they heard the news. Her sister, Linda, booked a flight from Chicago immediately. The police department said they suspected that Lola had been speeding, because there were no skid marks on the road. They took the belongings on her car and documented of some of them and put them in a box for further investigation. Lola kept a copy of that bucket-list.
"Hey Lola," Lola felt a gentle push on her shoulder and heard a small voice next to her ear. It was her sister. Lola realized that she fell asleep again just now. "I'm going to the store over there, do you want me to grab you something to eat?" Linda asked, patting Lola's head softly. "Nah I'm fine," Lola took out her phone and plugged in her earphones. There were still three hours until their flight. Her sister came back with a burrito and started eating while she opened her laptop. The two girls had been very close since birth. Linda was only one year her senior. They were as tight as best friends, but Linda had to move to Chicago for a while due to work and so the sisters were forced to live apart. Their relationship never changed even though they'd seen and talked to each other less.
Lola had hit her head against the steering wheel and so she had a concussion and had been experiencing memory loss since the accident. She didn't lose all of her memories, though. She still remembered her family and quite a lot of things in her life before she'd graduated from university. Lola had kept a diary, and the events that she'd forgotten could be retrieved from it, mostly. When she'd woken up from the coma, her sister had tried to help her recall what had happened before the crash. Lola had read her entire diary, but no clue could be found. However, the name "Kurtis" kept coming up in it, and it occupied over two-third of her life three years ago. Lola wasn't a good writer, so her entries were very simple and short, just like her bucket-list. It could only tell her that Kurtis was someone she used to date and that he had caused her a lot of pain. Whenever Lola asked Linda about this person, all she said were just, "You wouldn't want to see him again, I swear to God." and "Jerk." and "Asshole." So Lola stopped asking about it. Sometimes we think back on our past for good and sometimes there are things that we would rather forget.
Linda closed her laptop and looked up at Lola. She wiped her mouth and threw away the burrito wrapping and sat down next to her. Upon the companionship, Lola pulled out her earphones and started chatting with her sister. "What were we like three years ago?" She asked Linda. "Well, you didn't call me as much as when you first moved to New York. And when you did, our conversations got shorter each time," Linda put up her legs and held her knees, "I guess we were both really busy." Lola zipped up her hoodie and put her hands in the pocket, shrugged, "So, were you seeing anyone before Mark?" Linda said that she was kind of dating this guy called Ian, but it didn't really work out in the end, "He got married last year and invited me to his wedding." Lola then nodded and made a remark about how guys who invite ex's to their weddings were disrespectful to their wives. "Hah! Yea, talk about jerks… not as bad as yours," Linda mocked. "What? Kurtis? What was that?" Lola asked curiously. Linda revealed that Lola walked in on him cheating. "I guess I'm glad that we broke up then!" Lola joked. Just as the sisters were talking about three years ago, there was an announcement made and they were ready to board. "FINALLY!" Linda rolled her eyes and exclaimed. Lola stood up excitedly. She loved airplanes. When she was young, she would try to take photos of every plane that passed by over her head when she heard the loud noise. And she would ask her father, "Dad, why do I always miss them?" To which her father explained, "Oh honey, because sound travels slower than images. When you hear the sound, the plane has already disappeared from your sight!" Everything reaches our sensory receptors at different times and even in the same dimension, nothing is entirely in sync. Some people call it "deviation". But that's not quite the word for it, because deviation suggests that there are no relations between the image of the plane and its sound, when in fact it's not true, because that particular sound belongs to that particular plane and that these two things should come together, even not at the same time.
Sometimes images flashed across Lola's mind and she would recall bits and pieces of information about the events happened after her graduation and before the crash. But they were only images and she was rather indifferent to them, like recalling the neighbor's cat, Luna, that she used to help look after, but she had no affection for it. It was just an image and there was no feelings attached. The girls got on the plane and settled themselves. They took off and Lola laid back her seat. All of a sudden a picture appeared in her head. She saw herself in a bed which she could control its position. A thin tube was attached to the back of her left hand. It wasn't the hospital she slept in when she was unconscious, because she wasn't wearing the same clothes. "Would you like some coffee or tea, miss?" Her thoughts were interrupted by the air-hostess. "Just water is fine," Linda answered. "You were so mesmerized in something... You're welcome, by the way." Linda said to Lola. She looked over to the window as she was sipping on her coffee, "We're on top of the world but we're still under the world," she giggled at her own nonsense. Lola felt her increasing pulse. She loved being in an airplane as much as she loved looking at it from below. She loved being in no specific places. The in-betweens. Traversing time zones. It felt like being in a room filled with different times and spaces where nobody owned them; they were just lingering in this nowhere-state. And everything was in sync and overlapped because nothing mattered in this dimension. Nothing was early and nothing could be late. It was like being in a coma.
After a few episodes of CSI, six movies and some intermittent sleep, they landed on the adventure capital of the world. The girls checked into their hotel and started walking around the gorgeous landscape and the markets there. Before dinner time, they went for a swim at the resort. "My entire body sores," Lola said while she was doing warm up exercise, "it was probably from the flight." To which Linda replied, "I told you to use that neck pillow I brought." Lola only went in the water for 45 minutes and she had to stop. Her muscles were too tired to go on. She was feeling it now, the stiffness in her neck and around her thighs. After a delightful meal, they went back to their room and laid themselves down to take a break from the severe exhaustion. They planned to stay in Queenstown for three days, so they had plenty of time before hitting the bungee jumping spot. Lola tucked herself in and switched off the lamp beside her bed while Linda was doing her bedtime reading on a separate bed. "Hey Linda," Lola hissed. "Hmm?" Linda looked up from the book in her hands, Flatland. "What are you reading?" Lola whispered. "Edwin A. Abbott," Linda replied, and went back to the page. There was a long pause, and all that could be heard was the sound of the air-con in the ceiling. "I can't believe you're doing this with me, for me," Lola spoke again. Linda slowly turned to look at her and smiled, "Goodnight, Lola." Lola smiled back, pulled up her blanket and turned to the other side. Linda fell asleep an hour later. It was like the old times, the two sisters sharing a room in different beds, whispering to each other back and forth until the both of them fell asleep.
Lola was lying on the couch flickering through the channels and Luna jumped onto the armrest and started meowing. Its forehead had a small white pattern that resembled a crescent moon, and that was how it got its name. Luna gingerly put its paw on Lola's belly and brushed its head against her skin. It swayed its tail at her arm and Lola had never felt consolation in a more delicate form.
A subdued beam fell upon Lola's eyelids and to which she reluctantly woke up. She was looking for the cat but it was only a dream. She was stifled by the strange feeling of her heart slumping down, submerging into the bottom of the bed. There are times when we wake up from certain dreams and we can still feel it when we're in a conscious state, or even the day after. Thinking back on the times when we experienced this is because something in the dream was real, and that it links up the things we see in our unconscious state with reality. Perhaps it is a temporary feeling of nostalgia that we created, because we are thinking back on a dream, which has only happened not long ago, and yet we feel a definite distance between now and then. Nostalgia is our feelings arriving late, again and again. She remembered the cat, and she remembered the feeling now. Lola thought it was pain that she felt, when in fact it was only a familiar feeling that she had when Luna was next to her. We confuse pain with a lot of things, because negative feelings are very hard to tell apart, and because there are no reasons to tell them apart. Sometimes we are just too overwhelmed with all the love we hold and we can't think of anywhere to put it. And that's why Lola found consolation from a cat. She found someone, or something in this case, to hold the love that she wanted to give.
She still felt it when they arrived at the bungee jumping center; that specific feeling of the neighbor's cat. "How was your sleep? You seem a little bit off today," Linda asked with concern. Lola just shook her head and dismissed her sister's solicitude. They were given instructions and assistance for putting on the safety equipment. Lola raised her head and gaped at the platform where they were supposed to jump from. A quiver of excitement ran through Linda's vessels and she looked at Lola with an impressed expression. While they were climbing to the top, Lola was stunned by the images that flashed before her eyes. She remembered that night she was holding that paper she wrote when she was 13, of all the things she wanted to do with her daughter in the future - learning Chinese, picking her daughter's wedding dress, feeling the kick in her daughter's belly. She drove madly at full speed to rant and rave at Kurtis who had forsaken her when he'd got her pregnant. Lola did not tell Linda and her parents about it, not even the child's father; she hadn't had the chance to. She had decided to abort the pregnancy that moment when she walked in on Kurtis and his lover. She put most of her pressure on the accelerator paddle of the car. The floor was wet because it was raining. Lola was blinded by rage and it was too late when she crashed into the post. "Oh my God," Lola said to herself when she came back to reality. "Yea it's pretty high up here, don't look down!" Linda yelled.
They were transported to the platform in the middle of the air by a container that was connected to a cable. Under them were rocks and some green plants. The view wasn't as splendid as they'd imagined, but it was horrifically high. Lola was still thinking about the images that appeared in her head, and she pitied herself for what she had been through. Even though she couldn't feel what she had felt, she understood that it must be unbearable for anyone to have experienced it. For someone who had been so traumatized, she could somewhat be called a rebirth. The supervisor saw the agitation on Lola's face and he said to her, "If a person can't jump off the platform in the first 10 seconds, he won't have the courage to dive into the air for the next 10 hours. Are you sure you want to do this?" Lola tightened her safety belt and nodded at him resolutely. She counted under her breath, "One, two, three, four, five." And she was in the air.
The fall felt longer than it actually was, and in the first few seconds Lola couldn't help but wished it was going to end soon. She tied the belt tightly around her shoulders but the pressure she felt came from her chest. The feeling came out of nowhere. It hurt. She was hurting. She remembered the unbearable pain when she should be feeling weightless now. She remembered she had her head down when she was in the hospital getting her body checked. Her chin to her neck. Her arms around her backpack. She had spent two days in the hospital with all the other girls who were waiting for the surgery, too. All the other girls who also had their heads down, their chins to their necks, holding their belongings or reading their phones quietly while the air-con breathed loudly at the back of their heads. Lola felt fearless when she leaped from that platform counting to five, but she's feeling it now. She's feeling it - the electricity of acrophobia piercing through her organs. And loving him was a lot like that. Loving him made her start wondering somewhere in between the beginning and the ending if it was worth it. Loving him made her think about all the "what if I didn't jump's" when she's already flying through the free fall. And she was thinking about what the supervisor had said just now. Jump as soon as you can. Jump before the fear or the anxiety or any other feelings catch up. Do it before the feelings hit you. Feelings don't have a specific speed; they can either come early or late. A particular feeling belongs to a particular event, but when it comes at different times, it teaches us different things. When Lola almost reached the bottom of the rope, she knew coming to New Zealand was right. She was feeling everything now. She was feeling it all. But she wouldn't crash into the post again; she wanted to live. Only in a dimension where everything is placed on a linear line can we make nostalgia possible. When we feel pain for looking back at something, we should know that it isn't real and that it doesn't exist in this space-time. And when the feelings come back and hit you in the middle of the night, tell yourself that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter now because you've already jumped.
- Love,
Diane
