curried

There’s this girl that I know – Brandi - and I don’t think she knows how much joy she brings into my life. Every time we go out, life seems brighter and sunnier – she’s just one of those people. And when a dinner over Japanese curry comes at the end of such a monumental week as this, it’s all the more sweet. Sweeter than sesame laced mochi cakes from the ninja market on Sawtelle. Sweeter than memories we both have of times in Japan.

We only worked together for a few weeks, and we’ve both moved on to different places, yet that doesn’t seem to matter. “People come into your life for a reason,” she always says. It’s the sort of optimistic thing that I don’t say too much anymore, and yet it’s easy to believe it and not feel cynical about it when Brandi is around.

I remember, a few months back (on a late winter weekend when the rains had finally stopped) I was going to read by myself at the Coffee Bean on Main Street in Santa Monica (for lack of anything better to do) and there was Brandi, sitting there by herself with coffee, a magazine, and nothing on her agenda for the day. People often assume that you’ll never run into people in LA, but it’s simply not true. I run into people here – and I run into them for a reason. We sat out on the patio in the sun all afternoon, even when our cups of coffee had long been empty. She had just survived what should have been a fatal car crash, and I had just survived the worst winter depression I’d ever experienced, and yet we had so much hope and so many dreams that day.

This week, she just completed her first major job at work, and I completed my first week at Disney – there’s a lot to be happy about, I guess. And then I realized, there’s a lot to be happy about, not just because I spent my first day of work at the happiest place on earth, or just because I finally have a job that I think will challenge me. There’s a lot to be happy about because I have people in my life who can share in my milestones, big or small. Maybe I ought to be more cynical – but it’s just too exhausting after a while.

*** Side note: In other exciting news, you can find my very first published short-story in the July issue of the Los Angeles Journal – it’s a free journal you can find in various locations around town or at http://www.losangelesjournal.com