Random Notes On a Summer Night

It is absolutely quiet with only the sound of the city rumbling in the distance.  Then the siren, the horn, somebody is in jeopardy somewhere.  The walls pop and crack as the heat escapes and is vented into space.  Outside the kitchen window, an opossum stares at me intently, resting on the top of a fence layered with ivy, wondering who I am and why I am standing in my kitchen looking out at him.  His eyes glow in the dark.

I read and read.  I journey into the darkness to find the light.  I marvel at the ideas, the insights, the communion with the mind of the writer across time.  This book is about murder, about disembodied voices, about unexplained noises on the street or in the alley.  There are those who prowl the night like predators, but my doors and windows are locked.  The A/C is on and for a brief moment there is no pandemic, no uprising, no unidentified forces taking people off the street.  I am alone in the night.

I never feel entirely safe anymore.  I trust no one.  I marvel at the strangeness of the times in which we live.  We whisper about the new normal.  Will the pandemic die out?  Would we take the vaccine if one were available?  I would be hesitant.  Again, the trust factor.

Should I try to sleep?  I have appointments with students in the morning.  I must sit in on a Zoom meeting with others from the university.  I need to be fresh and focused, but here in the middle of the night, my mind is running through the past, the future, and back to the present, all jumbled together.  What do I know?  What do I know?

I know this is all not business as usual.  What will happen in the months to come?

I hear muffled footsteps outside and go to the window to see what is happening.  A man is jogging down the street in the darkness.  I wonder about his intentions, but it does make sense to be running at this late hour:  no need for a mask and no encounters with other people.

In the distance I hear fireworks or gunshots again.  They had tapered off after the fourth of July but every night a few small explosions in the distance, ominous and muffled.

The refrigerator hums and periodically drops ice into the reservoir.  The yellow light from my lamp falls all around me, concentric circles of shadows flow from my fixed position in my reading chair.  I harness the artificial sun over my shoulder to illuminate the page.  I am reminded we have had two power outages since the stay-at-home orders were put into place.  More than a few times, the internet has gone down.  These failures take on ominous pretensions in this time.  When the power went out on the first occasion, I could not find my keys and began scouring the apartment.  I never lose my keys.  I have never lost my keys.  I simultaneously try to reassure myself and chastise myself.  How could I have been so careless?  But my entire daily ritual and procedure has been thrown out of whack by this pandemic.  I panic.

I open the door and go out into the night.  They cannot be outside.  It is an impossibility.  I notice the hot wind has picked up a bit.  I go to my car and shine the flashlight around the driveway.  I spot something near the driver’s door:  my keys.  I stand there in the darkness, mesmerized.  How did they get there?  I do not even remember going outside before this moment.  It is an unsolvable mystery, but I am relieved to have my keys back and my car secure.  I go back inside and deadbolt the door.

Several times over the last month, I pass a room in my apartment on my way to the kitchen or to check the street and I see my father-in-law standing in my den or sitting on a couch in the living room.  I don’t see him clearly; he exists in my peripheral vision.  If I look right at him, he is not there.  I am not scared or creeped out.  I know he is trying to figure out his status, his new existence as memory and shadow.  I am reminded how much I miss him.

Do I see the soft glow of light beginning at the edge of the window?  Is it morning already?

The mourning dove begins the day with a sad song.  Outside the kitchen window, the opossum is gone, off to raid an uncovered trash can.  Squirrels begin to poke their heads out of the ivy and junipers that run along the driveway.  More joggers materialize.

In this night-into-morning, everything happens and nothing.  The universe did not pause.  The stars kept whirling around in the sky.  They are composed of dead light—some of them have already burned out and the light I see in the sky is only their light echoes through time.  I am only now getting the news that the star is dead and gone.  For now, the light remains in the heavens, a reminder.

And dawn comes.  The world awaits.  I close my book and put it aside next to my chair.  I will revisit it again in the night, when all is silent, and I can focus on the circle of light and the print on the page.  In communion, I am alive in the darkness with the dead, the memories, and the future, all at once.