Epilogue

I walk out of a big, brick edifice saturated with books and computers and students studying in order to make the grade and make the pay day and make their world a better place. I will not remain underground. I will walk down the sidewalk, past Murkland Hall where I was once taught French and I will live according to the fog that has engulfed this town, this Durham. I see it spread over everything; I see it flow into every pore. The sky is a mixture of black and gray and the stars are absent in this waking dream that I have found myself living within.

I walk down the stone steps and glance casually at the boys and girls sitting outside, talking to their cell phones. Talking to people on their cell phones that may happen to be so very far away. They hide from the world, with their electronica in their hands and I, I do as well. But mine, it conveys music. It conveys sound that I, otherwise, could never hear. The cobblestone walkway leads me to a street, a Main Street, and a single, solitary bus stop that I only use when I must get to where I am going. I continue on through the fog with the notes and sounds and lyrics that had, over time, over the time I have been given and have taken, been the key to my understandings of how I must operate within this phantom world.

And the lights, the lights are my new stars. When fog shrouds the world, one must look to artificial lights for guidance. I must find my way home, in a building in the woods, if I am ever to tell you how much I love you (with my machines because there is distance between us). Machines, it seems, are the only ways I can speak with you, for through these devices, made by man, I can instantly communicate words that would, otherwise, need to be professed loudly from the tallest mountain with a megaphone that would need to be heard far and wide – but in the end it still may not be able to reach you. Maybe I would otherwise need to speak with smoke signals, with Morse code, with telegrams that may, possibly, be lost in translation by way of the international postal system.

I walk upon this granite sidewalk, engulfed in gray, wet by the moisture of the fog. I can see the street lights as I wander on. They are white, blue, and orange and every shade in between. I question why the colors are so varied, but then, I realize that light itself cannot always travel in the same way each time. It must vary, as must the colors that their bulbs are coated in. Some of them flicker, some of them find themselves lost and waning, and some burn bright. In my heart, though, I know I must follow them all. I must gaze upon the lamp poles which hold these lights and see upon them the droplets of the fog, see the reflection of the lights they support, and therefore, see the counterfeit stars reflecting brightly against cold, dark metal. As I walk, I watch the ground, seeing the cracks of the sidewalk. I see the concrete bricks that have been placed there as they are – only through those lines, those dividing lines, can I see where one brick starts and one brick stops. I continue walking these pathways, these streets that leads me to a place I am supposed to call my home. This home is somewhere regulated by rules set upon me by the government, by law, and by my university. These laws are set in place in the name of safety. They are set in place in the name of progress and of reputation. None of these factors can be impressed upon me, for my safety, my progress, and my reputation are all malleable subjects, things that only I can find myself and only according to myself.

I see the street signs. One arrow points straight and another curves to the left. This curve, this curve to the left that dictates traffic – it says that is the only way you can go. “Well,” I think, “then maybe I shall walk straight forever. If I do, maybe I will find another sign. Another that will lead me to where you are sitting in your comfortable, beige IKEA chair and reading your textbooks on neuroscience and microbiology.”

But then my eyes dart forward to another sign on another light post. It contains the letter “P” with a line struck through it. No parking. I have no intention to park here, or there, or anywhere unless I am truly beside myself with happiness. The parking reflects the light reflected on the fog and I turn right and descend a set of granite stairs and, before me, a Sahara of a parking lot, literately twinkling. These lights guide me home. They set in motion my footsteps moving forward, one foot guiding the other, that foot guiding the first.

The fog may engulf the landscape, and may hide the true stars but iat the end of the desert-parking lot I can see my apartment complex. I can see, faintly, through the evergreen and maple trees the five massive, brick buildings known as The Gables. The lights that guide me home – they shine. They twinkle. Their illumination extends further, because of this fog. I can see circles of false-light around their epicenters. They look like halos, like bright halos that extend and give the fog color and depth.

There is moisture growing on my eyelashes, on my nose, and I must wipe away the false-tears from my face, but fuck, my mouth cannot escape from this pleasure-smile. This hope-smile. The fog here does not cloud my vision as I walk through the massive field of tar and gravel. There is a spring in my step but it is autumn and the leaves, they shine from the lights. They glisten from the fog. They reflect stars of oranges and greens and browns and reds and yellows and they reflect back upon me. They are all moistened. This moisture gathers and extends and the droplets of fog morph into droplets of water into droplets of tears as they fall from the maple leaves of orange and green and brown and red and yellow. Nothing is invisible. Everything is only hazy, strange, and beautiful.

But as I walk through that parking lot my thoughts remain focused on you. They remain wavering between what we had and what we will have. I remain in the middle and you are always five hours ahead (away). I feel as if I can explain all of these things around me I can get back to you. I feel as if, today, when I read in class a poem written by a man named Sufi that all my volumes of love will have to wait until we are together, living together and I can make you breakfast in the morning again like I sometimes would when you would sleep with me in my big, big bed with the most comfortable mattress that I had ever slept on and I would wake up and you would wake up (but we both were awake, really, we just both wanted to lay in bed) and we would go downstairs and I would try to make you scrambled eggs but I would ruin them because I am careless and you would smile and crack another and I would sit down at the island-table and watch the small, fuzzy TV set on the counter and you as you played chef.

But, I say to Sufi, why can I not write them now? But Sufi is gone, and he cannot reply so I must answer this question for myself. I think, as I escape the field of tar, the Sahara called “A” Lot, that I must always answer my own questions when it relates to me, my love, and myself. Only I know my love and my strengths and my weaknesses. Others, even you, might think you know. But I promise you all (the collective you) that what you see is through your own inner eyes – not mine.

I reach the sidewalk once again. This one, however, leads to a brick walkway that will take me home where I will drink my clear, alcoholic liquid and smoke my long, 50 cent off Camel Cigarettes and, after I feel as if all the love in my life is bursting out of me I will find the field of green grass, dampened by the fog, and I will walk in circles with my music-electronica in my hand and I will spin, and I will look at the sky, orange and blue, purple and blue and everything, everything will be illuminated by the lamps. And then, after I am dizzy with all those emotions I might now understand (for you and I and I and where I, myself, am going) I will open the door to my building, the North building, and walk into the mud room, I will swipe my student ID, the one with the picture from three years ago when I looked, somehow, like a greaser, in the door-opening machine and the double doors will unlock for me. I will walk up three flights of gray stairs, walk down a hallway painted orange that looks, somehow, like a hotel floor, and then go to my room, 307. I will wave hello to my roommates and I will go to my room, where I live (and sleep) alone.

And I will write this. This that begins in the middle follows on with a beginning, and, hopefully, as this all continues, has a happy ending.

Which, I know, it will. For when everything culminates in recognition of facts, I have recognized that everything, right now (and, strangely, before), leads me somehow to you.