In Departures: Part II I mentioned an old piece of poetry I needed to unpack before I could post it here. You’re in luck—I found it.
Did you remember it being better? was the response I got to this work the last time I shared it. Not exactly the most constructive critique I’ve ever received, nor particularly flattering, but—who cares, right? Live through this and you won’t look back.
But I will just a bit…
I was eighteen when I wrote this. It was my last year of high school, and it was part of the last assignment for my creative writing class—one of the only classes in school, aside from photography and shop, where I felt like I could be me the most, where it was okay with other people if I was good at something. I hadn’t learned yet I could be good at something and it didn’t matter if people where okay with it or not.
It was late on a summer evening—much like tonight—and I was at my computer listening to music when one of my favourite tracks came on. You might know it from the movie Mortal Combat or Mean Girls, but I know it from the opening of Hackers, one of the first movies I ever saw with just me and my friends in a theatre—so the track, the movie, and the entirely new‐to‐me genera of electronic music became forever etched in my mind. It’s a truly laughable movie in its terriblness, but it’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen. Yet I digress…
The track is Orbital’s Halcyon + on + on, and to this day it will still give me goosebumps when it starts, pulling me right back to the night when I wrote these words, when I knew when to start and when to stop and didn’t think for one second in between it all. I went from moment to moment, zigzagging through my memories as years of previous nights streamed in front of me. I changed seasons, changed provinces—I moved through time and revisited myself. It all just sort of happened—I ended up happy with it—and then the song ended.
Last Nights in April on the night before, the rain stopped in the air and was held in the orange lamp light, like silent smoke, drifting up from an ash tray sitting on the corner of a pool table in the bar down the street. on the night before, my feet stood in the fallen snow and the coldness crept in. the wind cut into my bare face. the moon came down illuminating the yard, and my mind like the frozen trees, stood naked in the night. tonight, all the thoughts, of all the nights before, came to me all at once, and the night seemed far too long. and morning might never come, for all the things that had to be thought of seemed to take more time. on the night before, the summer air was thick and the mosquitoes filled what space was left. the iron porch railing caught me as I stood head to the sky, thoughts to the past, wishing for the future and at the same time dreading its arrival, like the front of the line for the highest roller coaster in town. on the night before, the mountains looked sad, and the sky bluer than usual. the cool air came rolling down to push the heat of the day away until tomorrow, and me away forever, like any other day past by in this small town, whose confined valley sets the spirit free and holds it down at once in a perpetual state of confusion and understanding. on the night before, the true nature of life revealed itself to me for a split second. eyes of failing vision called to a distant hospital, but me across a lake linked by a collection of orange, and a car that's leaking oil. hours of darkness after days of the same, and another week to go. the night is the time for transformations from high to low, far to near, away to home, home to away, and away from home. welcome to the city, with lights orange bright tracing the path of other night time travellers, in glowing trails that dance from the plane. on the night before I left, the rooms were empty, the dog was sleeping, and the last of the tape was stuck to the floor. the cool cement on my bare feet as I stepped away, was just like the night before.