It was Samhain - the transition day between the old year and the new (yes, I celebrate Samhain; yes, it is a pagan holiday; no, I do not pronounce it "sa-mayn" - eat that Campus Crusade for Christ). It was also the night of the full moon, and unseasonably warm. Around midnight the moon was high and the sky was clear - the moon had a halo, a wide, hazy, glowing ring surrounding Diana's face. It's not something I haven't seen before, but that night it looked magical, a gateway to another world shining feebly in the sky. Thanks to my brother, I know the halo is caused by microscopic ice crystals floating high in the atmosphere, refracting the light rather similarly in fashion to its better known prismatic cousin, but I don't think about this at the time (arbitrary tense transition as my consciousness traverses from the realm of merely memory to the actual past, and I begin reliving the event, rather than just picturing it in my mind - drugs are useful for introspection).
Instead I ponder while gazing upon the infinite purplish cosmos - a shooting star flies from Orion's bow and hits the horsehead nebula in preparation for a feast on Jupiter's moons (Iapetus, that malicious orb, is staring at me). I reflect upon another rejection that took place not hours before and then rationalize that I didn't really know her and she wasn't my type and she'd never understand why I admire Orr so much and want to be George Dorn so she's not worth my time, but we'll still be friends. If this is my fate, I decide, so be it. As the serenity of the night surrounds me and faeries dance on my moonshadow and a thousand sprites smile at me invisibly from the trees I become accepting, or apathetic perhaps.
Wanderlust finds me then, and I start walking. Streets dissolve into each other like faces in a crowded room - each unique but all the same - and time disappears like a cheap whore when she's done fellating an easily satisfied and wholly unimaginative client. The moonlight makes the streetlights superfluous and lends a diffuse paleness to the world - not the paleness of the sick, but of lovers who spend too much time indoors and children who are too young or too old to enjoy the sun. The world is comfortable with nightly endeavors, shunning any possibility of the sun ever returning.
The moon is music - a haunting melody from a distant past, nostalgic harmonies that play softly in the background and remind me of dead friends and forgotten lovers. My thoughts drift and all is fog and mist as I allow starshadows and Discord to guide me until I arrive at the avenues and boulevards of six years ago - there is my high school and here is the diner we once spent hours of wasted time in, solving the problems of the world and our own tiny lives with equal ease.
I go inside to find the same Greek waitresses still working there, but don't remember me or the boy I once was. I sit down at a booth in the smoking section - O, how my convictions have changed; there was a time I looked upon those seated here with disgust, knowing well that I would never be among them, I was better than that - and take out a cigarette. I don't actually smoke, but I intend to order coffee, and somehow it just seems wrong to ponder over life's irrelevancies in a tiny diner over a cup of hot, black coffee without a cigarette in hand, or at least not when it's this late at night. Call me pretentious - I prefer to think of it as searching for an epiphany. That's ultimately what I'm always trying to find, an epiphany, the epiphany, when everything, every microscopic element of the cosmic equation will fall together into a singularity of perfection and stay that way, instead of falling back apart as quickly as it came like it always has before.
The coffee arrives. Coffee always keeps me up later than I intend to, disallowing me sleep while draining me of energy, but at this point I don't really care if I stay up any later . . . hey, how late is it? Jesus, I must've walked farther or more slowly than I thought. What's a little caffeine going to do, then?
"What are you reading?"
Hmm? Oh, I hadn't realized I was reading anything. A book that I'd forgotten I had with me has found its way into my hands, and is disgorging its contents into my brain, which I forgot to bring. It was a small book, full of underlinings and notes in the margins. 73 Poems, by ee cummings. I bought it used for a quarter two years ago, but all of the marks and scribbles are my doing. I keep it with me partly because ee cummings is my favorite poet and partly because I hope some gorgeous girl will notice and ask me what I'm reading.
"It's a book of poetry." I hand it to her - she's sitting at the table across from me - because I don't feel like explaining too much, and maybe she'll see how much I've written inside it, the scrawlings of some poetic genius, perhaps, and she'll think I'm some great writer myself: angstful, brooding, but darkly charming in a not-quite-definable way.
Yes, I think about these things, but for a moment all thoughts vanish as I get a good look at the face that belongs to the voice, but claims no ownership of it. I could describe to you what she looked like; I could tell you of every detailed perfection and every contrasting imperfection, imperfections that make her real, human, and thus that much more beautiful. But I won't describe these to you, because it doesn't matter, and in this moment I realize it.
She hands the book back after briefly perusing it, moves herself to my table to sit facing me, and then proceeds not to tell me her name. Neither do I ask, but I would guess it to be something that suggests Kat as a nickname, just because I know so many. Introductions seem unnecessary and vaguely disrespectful, somethings that belong to different people at a different time, but we do not need to bother with. We've never met, but we know each other, and we agreed beforehand to meet here for coffee, old friends returning after a long - far too long - separation.

I don't know where we are. We searched around for a place neither of us had seen before, and we seem to have found it. We're underneath a bridge, standing on some railroad tracks. Occasionally a car will pass overhead, sending dim, low vibrations into our valley. The cars could just as easily be drunks coming home late from a party as they could be men and women with early jobs: garbagemen and postal workers, paperboys and radio personalities. I notice the weeds that grow up the hills on either side of us, and love them because they are not grass that's been sprayed down and forced to grow. They are alive through their own will, their own fertility, their own vitality.
In the dim light of the full moon, nearing the end of its journey, and I feel the night's sorcery slowly waning, and time fighting to return. I begin to feel old again, mortal, and immensely transitory. But the morning has not yet come, Diana is not yet asleep, and for the briefest speck of God's eternity the entire world is ours, and we are free.

I still don't know her name, and as Dawn awoke I became filled with doubt that I'd ever see her again, but as we watched the sun rise and spill out reality onto the earth I thanked her, and left my demons there to rot as I walked silently home.

12/16/2001

Posted on 12/16/2001
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