DAYDREAMING IN THE NIGHT BY CEMENT AND LIGHT

It’s humid there and the airplanes wait out somewhere in the distance. Cars are few, it being after midnight. The planes have not come in yet, but soon seven flights will land and the pickup area will fill up, the flight crews coming out, the passengers coming out, all searching in the night for their rides, and some for nicotine, some for fresh air, all in a way part of the organic night. There is a strange beauty hard to explain that has to do with the way electrical lights cast their glows on the cement, the glass, the world there, a world within a world,- a liminal and transitory place. Maybe that is it also, the idea of possibility, of the many things other that come with travel. There is a van with a Guyana sticker. There is a white cowboy smoking a cigarette in the distance, brim down, like in a movie, solitary, waiting for someone. A couple walks past. The cabs. The shuttle buses. I drink a coffee and glance down at my shoes, then look up at the monorail that passes overhead, quick, sleek, fun, futuristic, but in a way the future is here. Then it is gone. The airbrakes of a bus are heard. It’s a coach, looks air conditioned, brand new, high up seating, tinted windows, and I would be glad to ride inside of it. You can see in the distance that the night waits, just outside this place, - and there is not much there, - a world of concrete and highway travel, industrial sections, and I looked and looked and saw no UFO, no shadow men, nothing of the sort, - just vehicles and storage centres, - old brick buildings and newer ones that have siding, more glass than the old. I look back, and see that it’s beginning to fill up just a bit. My mind goes backwards in time suddenly because of some sight or sound, - and cellular memory and spiritual memory and regular memory all mix for a fraction of a second as I remember: the terminal, a different one, and there is an incredibly long walkway. There are orange walls, orange and white and red, but I sense more orange than anything. I am young, probably carrying a duffel bag or knapsack, inside of which are a few shells and maybe a book, maybe a comic, a towel, a necklace, possibly pen and paper, but not for writing really, for drawing. But this is not the thing, these are not the things at all,- rather it is the mise-en scene of the whole thing,- the people,  the counters, the metal machines that pull the luggage around,- I am all of it, the everything,- and that is some secret that other people do not seem to maybe know. Outside it could be snowing, - often was, - and hours before the verdant palms, kissed by a light rain, the fine sand beach, some jellyfish but not many, - some patches of sea weed, but not many, - the sub-tropics, - the restaurants in from the beach, even the malls, malls and strip plazas with palm trees in the lots and black asphalt that meets bright white stucco walls. Of course there anoles, the little indigenous lizards. And they are mostly small, - but some have grown a bit bigger, - waiting there, waiting and watching, - and like many creatures they are agile, coy, interesting. Jimmy was around. Tom was around. Others. Good souls. Walking up, before that, forgetting for a second where one was, - and finding a room, a room so beautiful and private that even the hurricane shutters had a whimsical and positive quality. The hallways are green and shaded, and then there are stairs with little windows without glass, - holes in the walls, - made on purpose, in order to see the ocean. You can see it, blue. The birds. The whitecaps. Clouds. The Goodyear Blimp is there. Then you are out at the bottom, the sun, impossibly and preternaturally bright, warm, healing, and new. Click. I am back decades and decades later in the pickup area, - waiting for others to come back from other adventures. Soon they come out and it’s time to go. Into the night, into the dark, into the ways of the highway and the more regular world, whatever they are.

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