It is dark and a little bit late, about eight pm or so. I come to my house wanting to tack on a few minutes, maybe throwing in a stride or two. Heading past my place in Quincy, down a side street lit lightly by street lamps, I start taking care of the rest of the run. Ready to turn around and then it grabs my sight; a twinkling. You know when a car drives by and a mere dot of light hits the corner of eye and so grabs all of conscious mind in an inspection? It is just like that, just like a twinkle.
This is not a twinkle of light; this is a twinkle of darkness. An underpass a few hundred meters away glows with gloom. It is the same thing, grabbing conscious thought into focused inspection. This underpass shakes me, it calls me, it dares me to run and so I start but then stop. In an instant, real conflict of mind happens as many thoughts do. Should some gut feeling ask me to run, was I scared to do it and then the mind settles with, “go in and see what you see.”
Through the underpass there is maybe eighty meters of darkness with no lights, no cars on the road, and my eyes accustomed to lighting on the street lead to contrast blindness; a term for the blindness from going from light to dark. I feel, passing through, eyes on me. I run to the other side, cross the road and start to return, once again so certain of some watching presence. A few steps into the darkness on the way back, skin prickling from the feeling of something else, a feeling starts to come out of me I know has always been there. As I continue through the black strip a deep growl comes from within me and I began the stride thought about earlier.
This growl builds from a rumble into a small roar. Through the black I zip, knowing that out there is met by what is inside of me. Leaving the bit of highway roofed tunnel behind, I emerge into the light of the street lamps again. My speed slows and the noise stops right as I step into light. I return home a few minutes later and go inside.
No comments:
Post a Comment