memory: December 2007 Archives

I have always liked wandering around in cities at ridiculous hours. Everything takes on a surreal quality. I used to work a semi-third shift at a newspaper, and would come home at 3, 4, or 5 in the morning, in a small town. And everything was quiet. It was when I first notice that night time tends to have no weather. Especially no wind. It's a Twilight Zone episode, where you're wandering around an abandoned city and nothings moving. My favorite memory of that job and those people happened when two of my coworkers, driving home from the same job, pulled over and started a snoball fight, in a suprisingly bright street at 3am.

The last couple weeks, I've gone to a club about 6 or 7 blocks away. It's very nice not having to think about how I will get home. If someone offers me a ride, great. But otherwise, it's nothing more than a short walk. And I've been stopping at CVS on my way home, since I'm inevitably hungry by the time I get out of the club.This CVS just makes me cringe in daylight. It's every depressing aspect of city life all rolled into one little cell. But at 3am, even it becomes fascinating. And everyone wandering the aisles looks briefly at you as you pass, probably wondering why you would be out at such a strange hour in a place like this, (forgtting of course that they're also doing the same).

About 4 o'clock this morning, I went down to the lobby to get a soda from the machine. Someone was running the dryer in the on-floor laundry room. That's life in the middle of the night. You know it's out there, but it's all locked up behind walls and doors.