Night's Passing

At night on La Salle, it was always light. Strong street lamps cast slanting shadows of iron scrolls on my bedroom wall. When it rained, I could pull the thin cotton curtain back and watch the tree branches get wet in the shower.

I remember one night last spring, when for the first time ever, all the street lights on my part of the street were out. It was dark, and I was so relieved. I remember standing poised on the windowsill of the living room, ready to go to bed, but waiting for the street to blink on in a second. It didn't, and I tiptoed over to my bed and crawled into a deeper sleep.

There's something unsettling when you wake up in a hotel room, and those curtains, heavy, sometimes with a plastic liner block out every bit of the night's passing. If you wake up in the middle of the night, it's hard to find where you are. I've never particularly liked that sensation, the disorienting rake your mind must pull through places you might be.

When we arrived here, there were no curtains on the windows, so, like it or not, we rose with the sun. Since my father's help installing dark curtains on each window, I now have a little more time each morning to slumber. Yet as I'm drifting off to sleep in my room, I draw back one of the curtains in my room just a hand span's width to let in a little of the near-opaque night. It's so much darker here, but not in an ominous way. The rhythmic chorus of birds and crickets is louder, and when I wake up, I find a small crowd of trees at the window.

From an E-mail at Night

I've been slowly trying to settle into this teeny tiny - and, for one more day, empty - apartment with Langston. The change in landscape is stunning, though I must admit I'm having a bit of culture shock. I really had no idea how much I'd become familiar with in Chicago in terms of geography and resources. Here, I scribble out directions and grip them to the wheel of the car as I try to focus on not missing a turn, all the while being distracted constantly by the road's metamorphosis into a little strip of land traversing some sparkling expanse of water. *

It's so different, and yet there are plenty of familiar things (Dunkin Donuts drive through windows, where I always scrape my hubcaps, trying to be as close to the window as possible so they don't have to reach out too far to give me my coffee.) My apartment is small, the hallways as musty as I thought they might be. It's a pretty much low-income apartment complex, which to me means lots of pick-up trucks and dudes who smoke cigarettes on their balconies. Not to worry, though, my daydreams have now turned to saving up to buy a little house someday in the next few years.

P.S. There are stars here, and crickets! When you pull out of N., there's a cemetery and a golf course. The other morning, I drove out to the supermarket and there was this thick, beautiful mist covering them both everywhere.

*On water: I'm really surprised by my reaction to how water just appears everywhere. Every drive seems to traverse roads on bridges. One second, you're cruising along a little local highway, and then, in an instant, you're on a strip of land. Water, swampy or clear shimmers on each side. I know we're right by the ocean, but my memories of the ocean are that you drive there, and it's all beach and surf and sand and sunburn. Here, it's like the ocean is sneaking in (or out) prettily, like a courtesan heading down the service elevator. It's all , "Oh, you were looking for the shopping center? Well, you found me instead. And aren't I just beautiful? Whoops! You missed your turn..."