Empty
I like driving downtown after 3 am or so. The drunks have all driven home, the streets are usually deserted and the buildings take on an emptiness that goes beyond just an absence of people. The city is deserted, desolate. The night is fought back in pools of light; a series of streetlights, an occasional lighted sign, the blinking red of traffic lights no longer providing go or caution. Everything is now “STOP!”
A little steam from the grates, and I can sing along to Tom Waits, imagining a mechanical world of fire and steam and rusting pipes and gears below the streets. A life less organic.
Our headlights seek out a secure path for us, darting ahead into the gloom. The night shrinks back, rushing in behind us as we hurtle forward. I am startled when we see another car moving, either rushing towards and past, or creeping along with us. They do not belong; this is my road, my empty city. As the toothless wonders back in Idaho would shout, “Go back to California!” I am not ready to lose the illusion.
