i've been doing this so often i've got it down to a routine. take the steps down to the new parking lot, and hop the fence to get to the development on the other side. gates are for wusses. sometimes walking, sometimes running in the center of the road, past the darkened houses, in and out of the streetlights' glow, to where sunken road curves around to become franklin. i always stop here, at the end of the cul-de-sac. there's a little lake behind the bulrushes, and the lights from jefferson davis highway glint off it as i stare. the tree frogs make themselves known with their music. there was only a lone tree frog tonight, with the rain coming down. continue down franklin and make a left onto monroe. then it's just another block until i reach the construction site and the old bridge.
facing the bridge, one can choose to go straight, left, or right. i always go right. the path i take is a built-up embankment with a reservoir on one side and a small creek on the other. it is on this path that i can feel myself. i am alone, and even though the reservoir and the creek are manmade, and i can see the housing developments on both sides, and although the very path i walk upon is cracked asphalt, i imagine that nature is around me, and i am with it, part of it.
tonight i walk slowly along the path. i love walking in the rain. i always feel like the entire world is deserted, and it is just me, and the rain, and the night. the developments' streetlights glint orange and white like fairy lights on the reservoir's surface, and everything looks beautiful in the night. i enjoy my isolation as long as possible before i have to go back. sometimes the pealing of the church bells sounding out the hour brings reality crashing back, sometimes the sound of a car horn, but eventually i turn and go back to that from whence i came.
i stop and listen again for the tree frogs, saying to myself that after the next one i'll go, the next one, the next....but eventually i turn and leave. it's back through the parking lot and up the stairs to mercer. take a deep breath before opening the door, my last breath of freedom until next saturday night.
and so i continue this ritual, for without it i would surely go insane, have massive bouts of claustrophobia, feel like i was missing a part of myself. for this is where i am alone, where i just am. the night asks nothing of me, and i ask nothing in return. it is enough for me to be there.
1 Comments:
jo jo babe. i can't believe i am saying this but i think gavin degraw would have been better.
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Unknown, at 8:54 PM
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