Life's Not Always a Beach in Venice

I gaze beyond the blazing bonfire at the blackest night-skies all around me. The air is heavy, hot and wet. I'm holding my breath, terrified. A woman lurches forward toward me, hands outstretched, teeth gnashing, eyes bulging, her skin a rich chocolate, glistening under beads of sweat. In a white, grubby, linen dress, her thick, woolly hair is secured by a scarf of the same fabric. Her body lurches with spasms and she begins to chant. I can't understand anything she's saying, it doesn't seem to make sense. Just as I am about to burst from a lack of oxygen, I wake ...

Sitting bolt upright in my bed, covered in sweat, it's the dead of night and all is quiet. I blink and then it starts again. The chanting. But I am awake. It's near. I can hear her right under my open, first-floor window. I'm no expert on accents from that region of the world, but she has the thickest accent that I place as perhaps being Jamaican. She rambles the ramblings of the mad but it's a song. It's a spell. "Ah tohld heim na ceiggarates. Ah tohld heim na ceiggarates. He leaved me. He leaved me" she sing/ cries. It's utterly disturbing and sends chills through me, as if she's trying to conjure this man's spirit.

If you live at Venice Beach, maybe you know her too. She can be spotted sometimes at 1am as if sleepwalking down the middle of Main St near the Circle, casting her spell. That accent and the sing-songy inflections of her chant, cut through any other sounds around. You can hear her coming in the dead of night and her heartache rocks me to the core.

Every day when I say, 'Good morning,' to Virgil Wolf, manning his post at the Bank of America ATM at the Circle, he tells me I smell lovely (he's blind). Every other day, the old drunk duo who work the corner of Main & Horizon outside the liquor store, tell me I look beautiful and smart and bid me a good day's work. But this lady, she's different. When I hear the eerie chant growing louder, I duck for cover and place my hands over my ears while trying to sing a happy tune.

Like Lola the showgirl, I don't want to be sitting there with feathers in my hair waiting for twenty years for my dead love to come back to me. Like the Caribbean-black-magic lady, I don't want to be wandering the streets lamenting the loss of my love. This woman reminds me that there is a breaking point for everyone. What great mysteries they are - the human mind and the human heart.