| LANDLUBBER | JANUARY, 1998 |
I came down to Arlington, Texas, for an interview. Last night in the motel I couldn't fall asleep. It was warm and stuffy and I was hungry. At about midnight I decided to go for a walk and try to get something to eat. So I went walking. The air was cool and felt good. The street I was on ran perpendicular from the freeway the motel faced. On the corner adjacent to the freeway was a convenience store with a Burger King sign on it, but I decided to walk the other way, away from the freeway, and then double back and go to the store. My walk took me past some apartment houses. There were a lot of them here, the new kind that consist of a bunch of two or three story buildings that all look the same. I remembered when I came into town yesterday I saw a bunch of neighborhoods full of big new houses that all looked the same. About halfway to the next stoplight, there were no more apartments but some sections of small office buildings and some empty fields. A car would drive by every now and then. I got to the corner and a Texaco convenience store was there. I was starting to want a place to sit away from all the buildings where I could sit and think and listen to the quiet. Instead of turning right or left at this corner and potentially finding a place to sit, I decided to head back from where I came. I got back to the corner where the Burger King store was and thought I should go there and get a couple hamburgers and then go back to the room. Instead, I turned right and cut across a Holiday Inn parking lot so that I was again walking away from my motel, this time parallel to the freeway. I soon decided that this was dumb, but I did it because I was still wanting a place to sit. I could have turned around, but I didn't want to cut across the Holiday Inn parking lot again because it was well lit and I was afraid they might call security on me or something. So I kept walking. I reached the next stoplight after walking past apartment buildings, offices, and closed restaurants. I turned right, going away from the freeway, and figured I'd have to walk around the block. After a little while, I started looking for a street where I could cut across because I didn't want to go all the way down to the next stoplight. There were some streets that went into some office parks, but I didn't think they went all the way through the block. Then, about halfway to the stoplight, there was a path that looked like it cut through. It was a wide, grassy strip of land between the back fences of office parks and the back fences of a trailer park. There was a worn path down the middle made by pick-ups, I guess. So I started walking down there. It was a smooth, easy path for a while. Then, I could see ahead that the land was sloping down. There was some kind of tall marsh grass, so I figured there was water. When I got there, I found an artificial creek. I walked on a concrete drainage path down to it. The drainage path went down into the creek and when it got close, it went down very steep and became part of the concrete wall beside the creek. I sat there on the concrete that was sloping down. It was a good place to sit. The half moon was up to the left and the creek was constantly gurgling. At one point, a cat in the tall weeds behind me called out twice, as if to ask "friend or foe?" I never saw the cat. I began to think about how to get across the creek. If I didn't cross it, I'd have to turn around and go all the way back to the street and walk around the big block. I wasn't interested in that. The stream was about 20 to 30 feet across. It appeared to be just a few inches deep, but there wasn't enough light for me to tell for sure and I didn't want to get my feet wet, as I was wearing tennis shoes. Straight ahead of me was a big blob of concrete that was laying halfway across the stream. Getting down the sloping concrete wall to it would be easy, but when I would walk to the end of it, I'd be faced with a jump to the opposite shore. The jump looked like it would be just a tad longer than what I could confidently handle. The other way across was about ten feet downstream. It looked like a tree trunk had fallen and a bunch of trash and debris had collected on it. It extended all the way across, but I wasn't sure if I'd be walking on a solid surface all the way. Worse, to get to it would be difficult because between me and it the concrete wall became about an 80 degree angle. I was thinking about getting a head start, and then run tilted on the wall a little ways, and then take a slight change of direction at high speed and get onto the possibly slippery and crunchy log. That didn't seem like a good plan. I decided to try to scoot over to it, using the friction of my shoes, jeans, and hands to keep me on the wall. After going just a little way, I began to slide down uncontrollably, almost into the water. I was able to stop myself just in time. I then managed to ease back to my sitting place without falling in the water. I wasn't sure what I would do now. I stood up and saw a little trail going through the grass behind me and started walking on it. The trail was going parallel to the creek and along a tall wooden fence of an apartment complex. I thought the trail would go all along the fence and lead me somewhere else, but it just made a quick turn and suddenly I found myself at the top of the 80 degree concrete wall right in front of the log that went all the way across the stream. And from this perspective, I could see that it wasn't a log, but a five foot wide blob of concrete, flat and solid all the way across. I could get across it easily without getting wet, but the problem was getting to it. I would have to go down that approximately 15 foot high, 80 degree concrete wall. I just sat there for a little while. Finally, I started inching myself forward. I was sitting and I wanted to inch myself slowly down, but shortly I reached a point where I just started sliding. So I immediately pushed myself up and started running. The next thing I knew, I was at the top of the slope on the other side. I had made it, clean and dry. What was strange was that I realized I didn't remember much about running across. The last thing I remembered was sitting on the other side and inching down and starting to slide. I also remembered feeling my feet hitting the ground every step as I came across. But that was it. Maybe I had my eyes closed. I didn't intend to have them closed; I intended to have them open. I didn't know whether they were open or not. I just found myself at the other side. Then I went walking down that trail again. It led to the street. I turned and went to the Burger King in the convenience store on the corner. The Burger King counter was closed, so I bought three hot dogs instead. I went back to my room and ate two of the hot dogs. I felt much more relaxed now and fell asleep. And throughout the evening, these lyrics from the song "Bleach" by Fluffy were going through my head:
"When did the egg timer ring? | |||||
| --E.J. Koonpa | |||||
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