A Hot Dark Night in anticlimatic

There’s this street I like to ride my bike down at night, when I’m out prowling the sidewalks and roadways just to feel the evening breeze on my face. There’s a halfway house on this street, and usually a fairly large group of folks, always rotating out, that sit on the front porch and front steps and smoke cigarettes. I enjoy the smell of them, for old time’s sake, and I also enjoy ringing my bell ‘hello’ when I ride by. It’s a busy block. Lots of folks working on their houses, native women hanging laundry in the side yards (I think the tribe is developing a community of sorts there), and this one garage that always has a bright yellow light on and a large window you can’t help but see in clear as day.

But that was last year. This year, the halfway house must have moved the smoking section out back- because the front porch and stoop area is deserted. Must have been some kind of problem that triggered the change. The light in the garage is out- the person that sat watch in there, replaced by the dark silhouette of a car. New owner. Construction projects seem to have halted. The street is dead quiet. Sadly quiet.

I sometimes feel this great misanthropy rising up in me, where I abruptly decide that human beings as a species don’t deserve anything but the death and ruin that awaits them. They’re too stupid. And selfish. And destructively consumptive. Then I wonder if I’m just projecting myself onto a shadow of humanity I erect in the place of actual interaction with it. I just don’t have the friends and loved ones that I used to. Is it my fault? Or is it this folding planet? Am I made wrong for the world? Or is the world made wrong for me?

I was standing in line to get lunch the other day and heard someone approach and say my name. Standing there was a woman I once made love to in an apple orchard under the stars when Bush was president. We hugged and chatted, hugged and said farewell.

Last updated August 26, 2024