Chapter 12, In Which the Author of Said Blog is Unabashedly Nostalgic, Except in the Title, Where She Tries to Moderate the Somewhat Serious Tone of the Entry by Throwing In Misplaced Mocking Meta-Commentary.

I’ve yet to find a way to satisfy my instinct to go walking while thinking on things, a nighttime activity I sorely miss from home (and, to a lesser extent, school). Driving around in the dark listening to Radiohead cds is a questionable substitute, especially since my careless burning of fossil fuels as accompaniment to “Knives Out” doesn’t really leave my thoughts any clearer, most times. What’s lacking is a place both deserted and safe and outdoors for such activity, which is best practiced in a locale that gets the occasional breeze, a good view of the stars, and little or no traffic noise... all few and far between in Atlanta, unfortunately. With Jacques as company, I could leave home at any hour in which I could sneak out without waking the family and make my way around the lake past midnight, after the lights had been turned off from the soccer games and the park rangers had finished circling the path in their aging green pickup, to make my way around the water edge pondering those inevitable post-graduation thoughts of what it meant to belong to somewhere, or someone... Oversized laborador retrievers are excellent company for wandering around at 1AM; if I had one here, I’d drive down to Emory at night and walk around campus until I’d sorted my thoughts for the evening.

Even more than that, though, I miss solitary hikes in Virginia, when I could manage to get away from everyone for a while, even the dog. One morning last summer I woke up, grabbed a peach and some chocolate chip cookies and water (ok, and the compass and flashlight... however many miles it may be from Costa Rica, Jim Stanford’s story of his lost and dehydrated companion out in the jungle with only his tape recorder still resonates), snuck out early to the woods for the day, found myself a mountain stream and followed it round and up the edge of the waterfall to have lunch, nap, sketch, and then hike the long way back home.

It’s more difficult being alone indoors, I think, with the stated exception of libraries and bookstores, which get special exemption because I say so.

You can’t see it, but as I’m writing this I’m pausing to put detailed cross-hatching in the loops of l’s and y’s and g’s, sometimes warping the lines a little for added effect—look, little tiny op art! ...Yes, I often write the blog out first in longhand (and you wonder why it takes me so long to update)... tonight I’m sprawled on my stomach lying on my bed (it’s this twin we bought for the summer that’s far too short after the extra-long mattress of the school year, such that my ankles always hang off the end like they are now, my feet canted-in perpendicular to each other) wearing pajama pants and aught else because, this is my room, and Jim’s asleep and the thermostat is either turned off or way up because it’s nighttime...

...and I’d all but forgotten what it felt like, this sticky humid nighttime feeling that will forever be associated with the tossing and turning of those evenings after we got back from summer camp and had dinner and stayed outside until past dark, stretching out the evening as long as possible by releasing the fireflies one at a time from the makeshift plastic-and-aluminum-foil container (“what kind of food do people buy in glass jars?” my mom would ask, to no response but an exasperated look as she searched the kitchen for some leftover peanut butter jar I could peel the label off of or “here, take this juice glass if you must, and use some aluminum foil for a top, but don’t break it, please”), such a clumsy and unorthodox contraption, but still capable of holding a few dozen insects at a time before they’d begin to escape.

Setting them free was essential, not only as a means of prolonging the hours before bedtime but also to counterbalance the behavior of the neighbor boys, who were otherwise quite good company when it came to pick-up games of bus stop soccer or daring each other to jump the creek after school, but whom god would surely punish for teaching my little brother to crush those little motes of light under his summer payless sandals and make long streaks of glowing insect innards against the dark background of the asphalt.

And so after that, after all that, when the clouds came up with a front that shook the tops of the oak trees that stetched above our houses and Jimmy and Jeff and Travis were called home across the cul-de-sac and the last smudge of luminescence had blotted itself out from our driveway, we’d go to bed debating whether the distant flashes were from heat lightning or a distant storm. Thus began the nightly attempt at sleep, with its ritualistic opening and closing of bedroom windows, shedding of pajamas or sheets (according to preference) until all that lay between bare skin and that faint humid breeze was a thin layer of cotton... and all it takes is an air-conditioning free night on the fourth of july and I am again that restless child, turning over in the darkness, getting up to stand at the window and taste the tang of electricity in the air, counting the seconds between light and sound.

We don’t get midnight thunderstorms like this so often in Atlanta, it seems, and I’ve missed them all too nostalgically, even though it’s been years since my father toned down his annual switch to conservative and responsible air conditioning usage for us all following the first electric bill of the summer, so that my brother and I got used to windows-closed nights where the sheets no longer stuck to you when rolling from one side of the mattress to the other in futile pursuit of sleep. Here and now, though, even without the fireflies, kaleidescoped fragments of those summers fall through my brain to form some pattern, this sentimental form that, as a whole, I question the accuracy of, though the individual memories are true enough... and I quietly accept that yes, I am a bit homesick tonight.