Midnight Rider in anticlimatic

I’ll never get enough of strolling street lit residentials in the towns and cities in which I live. I’ve always done it. It’s as home to me of a thing as a hug from my mom. In the late summer- the dusty dark green leafed time of summer- when wildflowers are in late bloom and smell of pungent earth and yellow- the city sidewalks, after dark, are extra sleepy. Lulled by months of hot languid air, well taken for granted by now. Even wished away, if you can believe it, by a few. These are the evenings I like strolling the most- from shadow, to sphere of white lantern light, and back to shadow again- gazing about at whatever the lit windows around me have to offer. A silhouette of a cat in front of an orange glow. A TV playing in a dark room. Blue light behind blinds. A red curtain on a living room occupied only by a nightlight.

The only thing better than strolling the town sidewalks at night is bicycling, a habit begun when I was old enough to balance on two wheels that I still continue to this day. When I was 13 or so I had a walk-man and a single cassette: NIRVANA - NEVERMIND which I would flip, side over side, at periodic pit-stop intervals every 20 minutes or so. That was in my hometown, which is not the one that I currently reside, though they have their similarities. My home town is no longer quite what it once was, but at the time I was exploring it, it was downright magical.

From my house on the old crumbling sidewalks of the old part of downtown, I’d pedal down and away from the houses, down a very bumpy road through the marsh- into the woods, which smelled of sweet soil and cedar- up a steep hill, out of the marsh- into a fog like an Irish moor stretching over the town cemetery and the rolling hills of farmland I would strafe temporarily through, before returning to different quadrants of my town. The school area, around the school- down the ramps I’d walked in daylight hours earlier- past friends houses, crushes houses, any house I had been to- back down the hill, flying like the breeze, to the waterfront- boppity-boppity-boppity out the long wooden pier, pausing there to smoke a cigarette or perhaps cigar while admiring the twinkling lights on the bay. A smell of fish and seagulls.