Lisa's Time Machine #12: DOWN AND OUT...IN DEVASTATION ALLEY!!

[ABlairican Pie]

Having found a reason to stay in L.A., I waited the following Sunday to find her and strike up a conversation with her. But I didn't see her. But in the Sundays that followed, I saw her--but I was deathly afraid to talk to her. I was totally convinced that she must have been "irritated" with me for "holding her back" from doing whatever stupid things she had to do that day. (NO OFFENSE, MY DEAREST LISA, I'M SURE THAT AS THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN, YOUR TASKS ARE OF THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE!!) I saw her talking to friends, and I was off on the sidelines. I had to find a way to break the ice. Another thing I found that Labor Day weekend, I was oddly more hungry than usual. I barely had any money because I was new in town and not adept at cracking the L.A. job market. I was able to get a coupon voucher for Safeway at the church and stock up on bagels and such. But that did not last very long. In the days that followed, I stressed about Lisa's response to me, to the point where, for some reason, I felt that my whole Christian belief hinged on the question, if Lisa really did make Christianity real for me a few years before, did her possible
"negative response/attitude" negate all this? (As much as she was friendly about having to leave that afternoon, I began to suspect I had "displeased" her in some way.) Why I phrased it in thsi way, I suppose the real reason was that I had moved beyond
theories and nice little Christian formulas, now I wanted the REAL THING, the LOVE AND ACCEPTANCE as a stranger who wanted to make friends in a new church. Lisa had become a REAL PERSON to me a few years before I had now actually met her. In a truly sublime way, I literally felt as if she had reached through time and space in 1984 to tell me that GOD LOVED ME. And now, here in her home town and church, she seemed not to notice or care.
Was I expecting a little too much?
I realized that there was a way to break the ice--my poetry. I sat down and wrote it all out. This might open things up, I hoped.
I also checked out tapes at the local Christian bookstore by Stryper, the Altar Boys,and others, and wrote down the lyrics to an Altar Boys song "Fallen World", which captured lyrically and musically everything I was feeling, with its message and image of a broken world of pain, suffering, and crying out to God for healing--a world quite removed from Lisa's Barbie Dreamhouse.
I just wanted to open her eyes and feel what other people felt.
Finally, on a Sunday morning, I saw her and strolled over to her car where she was sitting with some guy by her door. She was beaming and very pleasant as I gave her my literary samplings--quite a number of handwritten notebook pages. This guy she was with (boyfriend? etc.) stood and stared warily at me. "Pretty heavy reading, " he said. But she seemed glad to get it. So I left after that and felt sunshine gaze over my soul once more, a little more relieved that I had opened a door to her.

[Nancy McKeon fan!]

more! please. if there is any.