|
By chris Date: 2006 Oct 22 Comment on this Work [[2006.10.22.03.00.21639]] |
|
Walking cross campus late after a lecture after the lights have come on and things familiar look different - maybe menacing, maybe just more indistinct. I pass a homeless man drinking what looks like vodka from the bottle next to the fountain of blue water - now black under the campus lighting. Walking ahead of me two grad students get close because of the cold, him quoting Byron, her acting surprised, him doing his damnedest to act like he hadn't planned the whole thing out. Central Avenue, Route 66, is a different street - haunted now by something wild, something that can't be predicted not to turn on you - desert sand and dirt visible in the sun gone at this hour, shot through with flickering, burned out neon. The bus ride to my car is faster than usual. I watch the student ghetto pass by, darkened by mid-week parties going on somewhere else in town, then light, then dark, then more light, then, far off, the South Valley suddenly appears - scattered pinpoints like luminaria and I think of you. I think of moments alone in Wal-Mart parking lots on the Gulf Coast, staring into the heart of darkness in the slash pines where the asphalt ended. I think of our last conversation an hour before - you in Target - retail white noise in the background - paper towels on sale! price checks for toys on aisle four - and thinking of you means hearing your voice means seeing your face exactly the way I saw it once in a dream in a different railroad town under a different volcano but shining clearly in the same kind of night. |