A Night at the IHOP

Every single time I feel like I’m going down I go to IHOP, I don’t know why, maybe it's because I think I’ll meet my soon to be wife there... or maybe it’s because of all the memories I made in that branch; L.A. and Chicago, to be quite specific.

The other night I went to IHOP at 1:00 AM and once there I started imagining a scene (probably not as great as Jarmusch’s); me and her, trying to settle our wedding date, out of the blue, she starts crying and she says, “it’s not the best time for us, we have to break-up...” and she leaves. I’m sitting still at the table, I’m frozen solid, then she’s walking out and by the time she’s passing through the window, she says, “I love you” but there's no sound and I can read her lips, as if she was walking away in slow motion; my heart is breaking 3000 frames per second.

Then the waitress interrupted me, asking me if I was ready to order, I said yes and I ordered pancakes with a milkshake as usual, she took my order and left. Then I look out the window to see if she was coming back or there in the car, crying. Was it real or I made that memory? I’m always lying to myself to be happy and if you keep repeating a lie, you’re going to believe it really happened.

10 minutes later, the waitress set the mood with the food, therefore I started eating... The more I ate, the more my face was happy. Then a song by Sufjan Stevens popped out all of a sudden, “Chicago” was playing and I couldn’t been happier. The song fitted like a glove, was it a coincidence? I don’t know but it felt good:

“I fell in love again
all things go, all things go
drove to Chicago
all things know, all things know
we sold our clothes to the state
I don't mind, I don't mind
I made a lot of mistakes
in my mind, in my mind.”

Sufjan Stevens - Chicago (From Illinois)

Then the song kept sounding in my head as an endless fade out. So stay classy Chicago and lay me down in the hallowed ground.



Listening to the Radar Bros. - Lake Life (from the forthcoming Auditorium 1-29-08)