Commute
Driving home at night, from west of Philadelphia. The time change, the sudden and new early darkness, seems to have slowed the commuting class. Tack on fifteen minutes if you feel lucky. Thirty if you feel realistic.
Nighttime driving is isolation. Contrast. Glare. Bright red brake lights. A license plate from New Jersey. Diesel churning engines. Squealing stops. Whoosh whoosh whoosh of cars on the other side of the median.
We inch home, our faces illuminated by reflected headlights. We are floating heads driving powerful machines at idle speeds. We talk to ourselves and imagine anywhere else.
* * *
Walking home now through the echoes and shadows of this biting night. Echoes of dry leaves on concrete, of underground machines, of moaning gusts of wind. Shadows stretching in every direction, turning the rectangular city into shapeless voids and sharp edges.
You walk faster in the cold, your face down, hidden from the wind. In the rhythm of your footsteps, you listen to your insides. Your doubts. Your frustrations. The things you should have said.
We are cold animals with obsessive minds. We seek caves for hibernation, for torpor. We tremble from the chill. From the solitude.
* * *
An untied shoelace stops you. Still, on the city sidewalk. A noise calls your attention upward.
A helicopter thumps overhead, a meteor blinking across the night. A skyscraper merges with the sky, its windows like stars in the celestial sphere. Iron and concrete and glass reaching into the infinite, but firmly rooted here. Here on this arbitrary speck, in this dust-cloud galaxy. Where billions of tiny souls are breathing steam into this cold night.
We are, all of us, on our way. Moving. Shuttling. Driving. Grabbing. Connecting. These moments of still life are waypoints on vast and epic journeys. Calm is accidental. Peace is a surprise. Silence is an inefficiency.
We will rest when we are dead. Or we will die from lack of rest.
* * *
Through the door. Keys on the kitchen table. Drop the layers protecting you from the cold. Under one light, and in silence, you remove your suit of armor.
Home is more than this place. It's this feeling. This person. This state. Where you run for cover. The reason why. Welcome home, where the heart is exposed. Where you can close your eyes without fear.
We sleep and we dream. And we dread the morning, when we kiss goodbye, then journey again. Through isolation and fear and doubt. But we survive to circle back. To return to this quiet cave, in the echoes and shadows, on this speck of dust.
Home.
