Everything You've Come to

As fall semester was ending, I had taken to wearing a bandana over my face when longboarding around campus to keep warm. It has the wonderful side-effect of scaring people out of your way as well. For some reason, clipping along at 15mph doesn't have the same 'don't walk in front of me' without looking as though I've just stepped out of a spaghetti western. Longboarding is an odd activity; normally I see it as a means to an end, but late at night it has a soul of all its own. I had been working late on a Sunday night with a few friends in the ChemE undergrad lounge. When I came outside I found Washington completely empty. I walked into the street, took off my headphones, stopped my music, and started home—carving from curb to curb. Not a single car or person the entire five blocks. It was a morning post-snowstorm run down through the forest–the light posts my trees; the neon lights my powder—laying the first tracks of the day.

Over winter break I had two episodes of sleep paralysis within a week, excluding the one mid-December. Sleep paralysis is characterized by “partial or complete skeletal muscle paralysis during the hypnopompic or hypnagogic states. In other words, it is the sense of being aware that one is unable to move or speak while falling asleep or waking up. Sleep paralysis may also be accompanied by hypnagogic hallucinations. These hallucinations can be auditory, tactile, and/or visual.” (Wiki Link). What this brief summery leaves out is these dreams are often the real hardcore nightmares you experience. Because you’re initially awake, it tends to start ‘real’ before you begin hallucinating due to the chemicals numbing your body. At first I began to think that I was having an increase in frequency but have since realized I’m just better at identifying them. Talking with others I think everyone has one or two a year, and I think I’m at five for 2006—not much to worry.

Due to my mild away-message-checking-ocd and clichéd lyric posting, I happened upon a man that had Bob Dylan’s songwriting, Frank Sinatra singing, and a touch of Marlon Brando ala Streetcar Named Desire combined into one French (rather Flemish) artist. Jacques Brel (Wiki). Amsterdam (youtube video). Ne Me Quitte Pas (youtube video) – the saddest love song I believe I’ll ever hear.

I was out last week to visit a buddy who is enjoying a small break before starting his new job and found Uptown’s normally bustling midday streets eerily vacant, due in part to the unbearable wind tearing through the corridors of concrete and brick. One man stood indifferent. Wedged between Hennepin, Emerson, and 24th, the statue of Thomas Lowry stared vacantly westward down Hennepin away from the city, top-hat in hand. The statue was originally erected at the intersection of Hennepin and Lyndale in 1915, a tribute to the man who created the first streetcar system in the city. When the memorial was moved in the 1960s to Smith Triangle Park to facilitate the tunnel system, Lowry’s son had already run the company and died, and the entire Twin Cities Rapid Transit system had been dismantled due to money and politics by 1949. Looking at him I couldn’t help but feel as though he held a bit of sorrow in his posture, or maybe his eyes were set a bit too deep and the setting sun gave him a look of concern. “Here, hold my hat. I’ll be right back.” just longing to escape to anyplace but here. Or maybe that was just me.





Believe. Fear. Love. Remember.