My Sunday Morning Walk began at four in the afternoon on Saturday, and it was a drive. The occasion was special, it called for a quiet celebration without words, in my car with the window cracked. I went up north, to places I ought only go in the sunny afternoon. There were houses that sat in the shape of smushyness, having been slowly weighed by gravity and years. Decks without floors, doors without windows, crashy cars parked angular in front. Yellow tangled lawns and despondent sidewalks. On this small walk of a drive, I again looked over the places I saw when I first visited the city more than four years ago. I had come to town for a particular reason, and in my youth, had temporarily lost my way to that reason. I had a doorless, topless, lady-killin’ Jeep at the time, along with a devastating tan. I remember a certain fellow looking at me and saying “Boy, you’re in the wrong place.” Emphasis on boy,you’re, wrong, and place. I thought he must have been some sort of prophet. “I sure am,” I said. And then he looked at me like I probably shouldn’t have said that, or anything at all for that matter.
It was a different trip this time, because it was winter. And because it’s been four years, and I’m a slightly different person than I was four years ago. In a slightly different town, hurling itself through the measured orbit of a planet that is light years from the place it so happened to be on the day I first wandered this city’s abject underbelly by accident. The first time, I was lost and looking for my girl. This time, I was looking to be lost. It’s harder to get lost when you want to be.
In the ten minutes following my reminiscent drive, I heard a black girl tell me I have cute eyes and a white girl call me an asshole. I believe they were both serious, but one was selling me coleslaw. And for all of this, I thanked the Almighty for his quiet sense of melancholy variety. These days, there are some things I must celebrate alone. I should be glad I know how.