…and tomorrow, I have to go back to work.
ugh. I’ve worked entirely too much the past few days. It has felt, at times, as if Im back in architecture school. God, that was so long ago, but that sick sunday-afternoon-i-have-to-go-into-the-s
today sped by as if the day consisted of only 15 minutes. I drank coffee. I ran around. I made phone calls to about a zillion people. I had a lot of “face time” w/important people bc I’m filling in for my boss, and my director. And then I strolled around the streets of union square, checked out the crowd at H&M, contemplated buying this sockmonkey sweater for my nephew, bought fish tacos, went home and watched some tv. Then I passed out.
Its 1:34 am, and I was supposed to spend the evening getting a head start on tomorrow’s thanksgiving. Oh well. I’m sure it will come together somehow.
You know what they never show in the movies? All the downtime that occurs between the office romances and parties on the beach. I was thinking that for every crazy night on the town story, there are approximately 30 solitary long-ride-on-the-muni-home stories. Most of my inbetween time consists of traveling from place to place, deep in thought.
Tonight, on the muni, I thought about Austin. I thought about my time there; how I grew up there. I thought of the small moments that have now become flashes of light. Like the time this guy, Cookie (I know this is weird, but he looked like a peanut butter cookie) tried to kiss me on the hilly lawn area near our dorm, and how, even at such a young age, I knew that I didn’t want to kiss him, and felt okay saying that to him despite the obvious repercussions. I thought about breakfast at 6am, after staying up all night near the lake, watching shooting stars. It had been such a surreal night–for some reason, we all crammed into Cookie’s car and drove out to the lake. Cookie, was playing his guitar in the back like a regular hippie. We just drove and drove and drove. I remembered sitting in the lobby in my dorm, after clubbing, talking to random people. People I will never ever see again–people who have gone on to live lives that I will never know about. I thought about the time we climbed out of my friends window and sat on the roof, watching the kids smoke in the courtyard. Eating breakfast taquitos. I had just turned 18, and I felt so damn sure of myself.
For some reason, the nights in Austin have been haunting me. It’s the way things looked. All the times I walked home at night–meandering through streets and alleys and by darkened lawns and lit-up fountains. From class. From going out. To the coffee shop. To 7-11. To Dobie. All the nights that were both quiet yet full of life. Its the mundane moments that compose a shimmering fabric of memory–like when you are driving in the middle of nowhere, and see a line of glowing, pulsating dots of life that you know represents a far-off town.
My memory keeps returning to the way a particular street looked when flooded with light from one of the Moonlight Towers. Nothing significant ever happened there. It’s just a place that I must have walked by and through and around at least a thousand times in my lifetime. And for some reason, its the only place I can think of right now, a thousand miles away. In another town, and another life.
