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By chris Date: 2007 Apr 13 Comment on this Work [[2007.04.13.00.56.20062]] |
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Walking across campus late after a lecture after the lights have come on and things familiar look different - maybe menacing, maybe just more indistinct like trying to see through someone else's glasses. I pass a homeless man drinking what looks like vodka from the bottle next to the fountain of blue water - now strangely black under the campus lighting. Walking ahead of me two grad students huddle close and move faster because of the cold, him quoting Lord 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, the place shot through with flickering, long- 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 (Wednesday being the new Friday), then light, then dark, then more light, then, farther off, the South Valley suddenly appears - scattered pinpoints like luminaria out of season, like an overflow of stars from a sky too small to hold them all. |