The shade was known as a commodity in the world of vehicular living. Especially in the San Fernando Valley, where Summer was Bummer and midnight in August was always around eighty-five degrees. To say the Valley got hot was to say Elvis was famous. Van Man arrived and the spot was his. He parked and sat in the back to enjoy the coffee.

An hour passed and Van Man decided to roll down the windows and, as he did, he noticed a Sedan parked a few spaces over. Van Man knew it. Sometimes the Sedan parked in the shaded space. It was driven by a black man who seemed new to the lot. A small rivalry had begun between them, whether Black Sedan Man knew it or not.

From outside the lot, A White Couple walked toward the Black Sedan Man. The White Wife approached the Black Man on the driver’s side. The White Husband held up a cell phone and recorded the event. What seemed as a civil exchange between White Wife and Black Man took place. Van Man did not hear the words, but he understood the meaning. Then Van Man heard one phrase clearly. “I’m sorry”, said Black Sedan Man and he cranked his engine and drove away. The White Couple seemed satisfied in themselves. The White Husband put away his cell phone and they walked from whence they came.

Why did they do that?, Van Man thought to himself. He looked at the lot’s parking sign. NO PARKING 11PM – 6AM, read the sign. It was nine-thirty in the morning and there were five other vehicles in the lot. The Van Man was pissed. That was not a good way to start the great hot day. And he was no longer a rival with Black Sedan Man. They were allies.

The morning turned into early afternoon and Van Man was out in the Valley streets again. He looked for shade. One o’clock and it was one-hundred and five degrees. He was shirtless and knew he should just get naked. It was that fucking hot. Being a swinging dick while he drove sounded perfect, but it was not the Seventies. At a stoplight, he stared at the Young Man with the Homeless sign. That was someone who could not depend on shade. That was a person that could only make some scratch where the gettin’ was good. And that was usually at unshaded off-ramps.

Four o’clock and Van Man found himself parked under shade somewhere in a nice Studio City neighborhood. It was one-hundred out under The Sun. Too damn hot to do any damn thing. Most of the houses in the neighborhood definitely had pools. A scream rang out in pain and a voice yelled from somewhere in the heat, “It’s fucking hot!” Van Man agreed with the random cry of injustice. It was fucking hot. The Van Man drove away calmed. Everyone was equally a victim to The Sun.

Greetings from Gravipause, Brian Bradford’s new novel, expresses an idea which is the complete opposite of that.

Another feeling it expresses, before I tell you about the book and the story, its style, themes, and motifs, reminds of the Talking Heads’ song, “Once in a Lifetime.”

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack

And you may find yourself in another part of the world

And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile

And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife

And you may ask yourself

Well . . . How did I get here?

Greetings from Gravipause, in fragmented and disjointed bursts of scene and humorous energy, tells the story of Brian Bradford, an adjunct astronomy professor who falls in love with a Japanese woman. Part meditation on our painfully real frailty as human beings, on suburban boredom, the ridiculousness of American culture and advertising, part travelogue, the book follows Brian as he moves from Boulder, Colorado to Osaka, Japan, and back to his roots in New Jersey with his wife Sadako, a mezzo soprano opera singer, where he becomes an adjunct astronomy professor at Wood Hills Community College. It’s a story about a man growing, looking at himself with tremendous self-deprecating humor, his doubts about his life, and especially his marriage. At the center of the novel is this relationship, how their once intense and beautiful love that blossomed in Japan somehow, some way, leads to them drifting apart over time. There are infidelities, both real and imagined, emasculations (at one point he loses his dick, finds it in the back of a pharmacy parking lot and feeds it Viagra to make it better), and the powerful sense of despair that time and forces of nature are tearing them apart.

Time is interesting in this book that intertwines concepts of physics at the beginning of many chapters. There are encyclopedic, and beautifully rendered explanations of: gravipause, retrograde motion, galaxy, the birth of a star, the Pleaides, etc, which tie in thematically to the course of the protagonist’s life and provoke many questions. Can Brian and Sadako fight against the forces which tear them apart? Do we move backwards only to move forward? Is it our destiny, our gravitational pull, to become our parents?

This question is especially powerful because Greetings from Gravipause is layered with a separate narrative about the moment Brian’s father walked out on his family—all his doubts, his internalized moral debate, whether or not they’ll be better in the long run without him around, and his feelings of empowerment and independence when he takes that last step. Is this Brian’s destiny, the essence of his nature? Is it all written in the stars?

Or maybe we are not stars, and while we are governed by the same rules of nature as any other material creature, we have these other rules that cannot be touched, reasoned, or explained, things that are unseen. Maybe all those guiding forces are out the window when you’re walking and talking all night with a girl you just met in Osaka and she’s singing to you on a stone bench, and even still years later when that same woman says to you, “Brian, why you gonna wear this jeans everyday? Why you doesn’t put on the clozes which I buy for you?”

Even Brian at a certain point asks himself, “Sometimes I wonder if there’s anything still left, still unseen.”

One last message to my uncle, a response eighteen years after the previous conversation in his car: if you’re willing to look at yourself, be vulnerable and honest, then there’s always more layers to unravel, more adventures to discover, more energies to explore. We are always in a state of transition, orbiting around a cosmos, always so susceptible to change from outside conditions.

Toilet Paper for Dummies

Gangster Rap Battles for Dummies

Keanu Reeves for Dummies

Quantum Mechanics for Dummies

Gummy Bears for Dummies aka Gummies, Dummy

Virtuosic Bassoon for Dummies

String for Dummies

Making Child Support Payments for Dummies

Crunk Walking for Dummies

Following Through on Intentions for Dummies

Do I ever tell people the intricacies of my internal meme generator? Of course not. It’s too subtle. Too indirect. Not that you would have to think hard about it. That’s not what it’s about. It’s actually not about anything. Do things have to be about things? I don’t think so. Sometimes it just is what it is and there’s nothing you or I could do about it. Also, it’s really hard to explain the context of a joke that worked in your head. What am I supposed to say? “Now, imagine there’s a picture of Beyoncé with a lot of make-up on, perhaps too much . . .” Memes just don’t work like that.

I actually didn’t know what a meme was until last week. But it’s not like you need a four-year degree in it to understand what it’s all about. It’s all right there in front of you.

I wouldn’t throw out cheap acronyms in my memes. I’m not about that. No WTF LOL OMG JK FMLs here. I’d be more of an ironic throwback to the 80s or 70s meme generator. Remember Linda Marsh? Executive Producer of The Facts of Life? Oh no? Now you will. Listen, I don’t need to prove to you right now that my memes will make you laugh, stimulating your medulla oblongata—that’s the haha part—but stay in your frontal lobe, where the memories are. My memes would be so deeply ingrained in your unconscious mind you wouldn’t even know why you loved my meme so much. It’d be like those old, sad losers who just go to Kevin Costner’s baseball field in that baseball movie. You know what? Maybe I’ll make a meme about that. That’s kind of an ironic throwback.

Or maybe I’ll make a meme about memes—a meme only a meme could love? Do memes like other memes or are they too competitive for that, like humans?

My memes will just live in the moment. Like, maybe I’ll make a meme that’s just a blank white space. Another thing I know that you don’t is that the word “meme” in French means “same.” That’s gotta count for something.

I don’t have a computer though, and I think WiFi will give me brain cancer, so I stay off the internet. That’s the thing. I don’t think that should be a problem though because the creative mind lives off the screen. I don’t need a blinking cursor and an HTML to make meme magic. I just need the wind through my hair and sunshine on my head. The clouds that blink past like blip . . . blip . . . blip . . . All that crap that happened before Youtube.

There’s also this internet café not too far from my apartment. And at the public library there’s this tech IT guy who helps me with technology stuff. Do they know their helping the next great meme generator? Of course not. And do I tell them? I don’t have to. Not because I don’t want to share the profits with them—honestly, I’ll drop all the money down from a helicopter all over the city. It’s not about that. It’s not about achieving acceptance with my peers or the IT guy who just graduated undergrad from some top-tier school. It’s not even about connecting with others, seeking humanity through the computer screen.

It’s never been about anything, anything at all.

Who’s David? I tried to remember while putting a box of prewashed salad and frozen burritos into the fridge. My cats were meowing, rubbing their body against my feet. I guessed that David was the one, who lived on the 2nd or 3rd floor. He was always wearing light brown sunglasses like the ones NJ gangs used to wear in the 70s. Because of the sunglasses, I could never look at his face closely, so I couldn’t tell his age. He could be in his 60’s or 80’s. But, I knew that his health was failing. There were so many old people living in the building so I often held the elevator door looking at them walking slowly with their unstable feet. David used to push a walker with plastic bags hanging on it.

One summer about two or three years ago, the elevator was out of order for a few days. It was one of those hot days when the weather forecast warned us to drink plenty of water. I was stepping down the stairs when I saw David coming out from his place with his dog. He wore a dark green vest with lots of pockets every day throughout the year. During summer he would only wear a top and shorts.

I knew his dog’s name was “Kirby” because I asked him the first time I saw the pair.
“Hello, Kirby,” so I said. David looked at me surprised as if saying “how come she knows my dog’s name? Have I ever met her?” Almost all the neighbors, though they talked to me in a friendly tone, usually forgot about me the next time I saw them. Old age might be one of the reasons, but it also happened with younger neighbors. I think I am a forgettable person, appearing simple and polite, nothing special to them.

“Bastard!” David shouted at the broken elevator. Kirby was sticking out her tongue with short breath. I think she was a Siberian husky. It was clear that she was old. She was dragging her body like a marathon runner in pain crawling to the goal, and her goal was to complete this walk with her master. I knew it was hard for her but I don’t think she didn’t want to go. It’s like a painter painting while dying. Walk for a dog. It’s supposed to be a joyful routine, a connection to the outside world. I asked David if I could help them in any way. He said I could carry Kirby to the first floor. I carried her body. It felt like she was as big as I was. I can usually carry heavy things fine but her shivering made me feel like I was carrying an elephant. When I placed her on the floor, with her innocent cloudy eyes Kirby looked towards the stairs where David was slowly coming down. She didn’t even notice my caress and finally saw my eyes when David attached the leash to her collar.

“Fucking, bastard!” David once again shouted. Apparently at the elevator not at me. I wondered if he and the dog had enough water. Then, I remembered dogs don’t sweat.

“Thanks,” David said in the same tone as when he said “bastard”. I thought he was not genuine but for some reason I thought he was a decent person. I held the entrance door. Kirby went first, David second and then I. I said bye and looked back at them when I turned at the corner. Kirby won’t live too long, I thought. I believe the elevator started working 2 days later.

I don’t know when Kirby passed away but one day I realized David was walking alone often, so I assumed she passed away. Sometimes I saw him talking to our neighbors in front of the apartment. For some reason the neighbors talking to David always had a serious expression. I said hello when he passed by on the street, but he always looked at me as if I was an overly friendly stranger who greets everybody.

Another memory of him was on a Thanksgiving day. It was extremely cold that day unlike this year’s Thanksgiving. I think I was spending the day alone coming back from watching a move in the city, or I was with my friends coming back from dinner. That night David and I took the same elevator up.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” we told each other.

“Did you eat turkey?” David smiled. It was the only time I saw a friendly and happy expression on his face. Maybe, he was drunk. Maybe, he was back from a good dinner with his friends. I forgot what I answered to his question. I don’t eat turkey but I probably didn’t bother to tell. But, I do remember telling him that I was going to feed canned-turkey-wet-food to my cats.

“Sure you do. My cat already ate so much turkey and is sleeping like she is dead now,” David said and left the elevator.

Oh, he has a cat, I thought at the moment. I thought he was alone and petless since
Kirby’s departure.

As far as I know, two residents in the apartment have passed away this year. David this winter, and Sergio, who passed away earlier this year.

Unlike David, Sergio was young, perhaps younger than me. It was so easy to run into Sergio and his wife, Cathy, because they were walking around the building all the time. They seemed to be doing laundry every day. Whenever I was at the Landry room, I would see at least one of them. My machine was always nearly full with a week worth of clothes. But, they usually put very little inside, like a blanket or a few shirts, and they moved freely all over inside the machine. Their clothes must get cleaner than mine, but they must spend a lot of money for laundry. I remember one day Cathy was saying to Sergio, “Honey, did you take morning medication?”

They had 3 dogs. Paco, Lucky and Daisy. They walked them often. I don’t know how many times a day but it seemed as though the three dogs would be leaving the apartment whenever I was about to enter the building.

As many close couples tend to look like each other, Cathy and Sergio were both obese. Cathy had soft blond hair with highlights and bright eyes. She always wore T-shirts and black spandex that stretched out to the max. It was as if she had a healthy person above the shoulder.

I remember Sergio’s huge body but not much of his face. I feel he had a big nose and thick eyebrows. What I remember the most is his deep low voice of “how’re you doing?” that he always said to everyone as if it were a reflex. He said it so naturally that even if he didn’t look at you when he greeted, you could still feel his friendliness.

There is one incident I remember with Sergio. It was perhaps another summer day. Around the corner of the apartment, on the way back home, I ran into a lady I often chatted with about cats. As we came close to the building, we saw Sergio coming out with a cigarette in his month, which was already lit.

“I hate smoking! No one is allowed to smoke in the common area of the building!” she yelled as if she suddenly became a different person. Sergio looked at us at the corner of his eyes and said,

“Ehhhh . . . Fuck . . . ”

I stayed quiet. I don’ have an opinion about smoking.

“Fuck you,” the lady returned to him.

Despite the incident, I have memories of this lady and Sergio and some other neighbors, perhaps David also, chatting in front of the building, in the many days of us living here.

So, there was a note about the memorial for Sergio’s life last spring time. The notice wasn’t on the elevator wall but on the wall next to the mailbox. Sergio, Cathy and their dogs lived next to the mailbox on the first floor.

When I was looking at the notice, a man of my age (currently back in school after working a few years, he told me before) came back from jogging covered with sweat.

“Do you know Sergio?”

“He had a heart attack.” He pointed at the apartment next to the mailbox.

“Oh, no! He was so young.”

“Yeah, but he was apparently so unhealthy. A few months ago I saw an ambulance in front of the building and saw him being carried inside.”

“The wife must be so sad.”

“Cathy? Yeah, I cannot imagine . . . ”

I didn’t go to Sergio’s memorial. I don’t remember if I couldn’t make it or if I decided not to go. With some flowers I rang the bell of their apartment a few days later. There was no human answer but the 3 dogs emotional barking. When I got no answer again at my third visit, I just left it with a note mentioning my apartment #.

Later the same year, David had gone. I was eating the prewashed salad while watching TV and someone rang my doorbell. It was the anti-smoking lady.

“David left a cat. She is looking for a new home. Can you take her?” she said. I said I could take her temporarily until she finds a new home. I had already 3 and all my friends advised me 3 was the max.

“Where’s the cat now?” I asked.

“At Cathy’s. Do you know her? She is living next to the mailbox.”

“Of course.” Her husband had just passed away this year, I was about to say, but didn’t.

“Does the cat get along with the dogs? If the cat’s not happy there, I would take her for now.”

“OK. I will ask Cathy,” the lady left.

Neither anti-smoking lady nor Cathy came back to me about the cat. Today, picking up my mail, I heard shy “meows” from Sergio’s apartment.