Walking After Midnight

I have this habit, probably a bad one, that I call Walking After Midnight. Actually, this may be a bad title for my bad habit. For it does not always involve walking (though it usually includes two-legged locomotion of some kind), and it does not necessarily take place past midnight. Quite simply, this is a habit that involves walking out of doors in unusual conditions. During snow storms, ice storms, pouring rain, heavy fog, or simply late at night—any time that deviates from the norm, any time that casts the mundane world into a new light, any time that shadows and shades and makes of this old world something new. Even if it is only the illusion of newness. 1

It is all very well to talk of this habit clinically, analytically, as a case study on paper. But an essential part of it is intangible. It has to do with the deep-seeded human urge to go out into the world, to explore it and find something new, to taste and experience as much as possible in our brief time here. It is melodramatic, yes. But in this world that we have explored and explained and mapped so thoroughly, it is through such seemingly innocuous experiences that we must satisfy our desires.2

With any luck, what I mean will be better illustrated through example.3

I am a college student, and I live in a dorm. Though small, it’s a big enough space for my needs—most of the time. But there are occasions when I get sad, or depressed, or fed up, or stressed out—not necessarily about any one thing in particular, but about all the little stresses and sins and unpleasantness that must occur, even in a good day at school. Sometimes, I just need to get away.4

Such a night occurred a few nights ago. There was nothing terribly wrong, but perhaps that made all the little nagging things all the worse: there was no great object to fix my moodiness on, and no master stroke which would theoretically fix everything. Being male, I like the idea of making things better by gathering all my problems in one place and punching them, but that rarely actually works. So, disgusted with my own moodiness, I felt the need to get away. I decided to take this mood quite literally, and declared to my roommate that I felt like sprinting. 5

My roommate (who we will call Aaron, as that may or may not be his name) decided to join me. We sprinted down the road that surrounds the campus green, and the night air was cool and whispered in my ear as I fled through it. The ground was hard beneath my feet and seemed to lift me up again each time I crashed to earth. There was a moment, when I was at the peak of my sprint, where I closed my eyes and inhaled and the night air poured into my lungs and the world seemed to blur, and it was as if I was in my own cocoon, as though I had (if only briefly) broken the surly bonds of earth.6

Then something, some instinct or some part of my subconscious that was paying attention while I was wrapped in my own world, made me veer left and leap a curb and jump up a shallow set of steps and run along the sidewalk. It was only then that I realized a white SUV had appeared behind me from nowhere and unloaded a projectile of some kind. It struck the sidewalk behind me and exploded with a sound like violently fizzing soda.7

Not too long after that, Aaron and I both ran out of breath. The SUV having roared off into the night, went back to investigate what we had been attacked with. It turned out to be a water bomb, constructed of plastic grocery bags. It was a rather ingenious construction; part of me hated to see it wasted. Then, because it was about 2 in the morning, and because we never have normal conversations anyway, Aaron and I proceeded on our way talking over the relative merits of constructing such a bomb using alcohol: the pros, the cons, the likely outcome. We concluded that such a construction would require great wealth, for anyone else would surely not waste that kind of money throwing away perfectly drinkable alcohol.8

That settled, we continued on our way. We descended the hill that leads from the metaphorical gates of the college into the city itself. 9

We traveled a street I’ve seen many times. One- and two-story 50s-era houses and apartment complexes rise on either side of the wide road for a couple blocks, before giving way to a Catholic church and school. The brick church building and the concrete-walled school building intersect at right angles, and there is a wide courtyard with a basketball hoop and a tall brick tower at the center. I am still not certain what its purpose is, but it has a crenellated top that makes me think of a turret on a medieval castle. In the daylight, this is a normal-seeming street: dogs bark, birds flutter overhead. I have been heckled several times by a group of middle-aged women who like to sit in their lawn chairs of an afternoon and drink beer. Cars come and go around the church, parishioners and priests constantly engaged in some church function. All is well.10

But in the night, stripped of the birdsong and with the dogs silent and the middle-aged women gone to bed with their beer consumed, and the street dark and silent and dappled in shadow, when the slightest rustle of the air creates sighs and groans that speak of lost love and expectations unfulfilled—then the street takes on a new aspect. It is dead, almost. It has the aspect of a body lying in wake: the form is there, but there is no spirit to animate it, to make it live. 11

As we approached the Catholic church, Aaron began to sing. He has the kind of sub-bass voice that is designed to make opera teachers cry (and nearly has, at least once). We had recently watched the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?, so old-time bluegrass songs were rattling around in his head:12

“Some bright morning, when this life is o’er,13

I’ll fly away14

To that home on God’s celestial shore15

I’ll fly away…”16

The song echoed in the courtyard, swelling and replying and filling the air, Aaron’s rumbling bass multiplied half a dozen times. It swelled until the chorus seemed to rise into the air, and disperse in the atmosphere. The deathly silence descended again, and a streetlight overhead flickered and went out. We turned around, and went home.17

That is how these walks go—they have no rhyme, no reason, no regulation. They simply happen and then cease to happen. Then why engage in them? The answer may not make any more sense than the walks themselves. The urge to go on these walks is like a call to adventure, the call to a battle which can have neither victory nor conclusion, but in whose fighting one is healed.18