Last night's walk
Jan. 15th, 2003 10:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiSo, I didn't make it to Dunkin' last night -- it was too damned cold. But I did head to Kroger and back (bought a diet coke). When I stepped outside, it was quiet -- not a single car around. Granted, it was past 1 in the morning, but this is a major road, so it was still unusual. It was also quiet the entire walk there, surprising for such a busy road (even that late). I love late-night walks.
It was a habit I developed in college. Freshman year, actually. Early second semester. I was drunk off my ass for maybe the fourth time in my life, on a combo of SoCo and bad beer. For the first time, though, I actually stayed awake until I was nearly sober. It was 3 in the morning. My roommate was snoring in his post-drunk sleep, I wasn't the slightest bit tired, and I was starting to suspect that getting drunk for the sake of getting drunk really wasn't the world's smartest behavior.
With nothing else to do, and no one else on my hall awake, I figured I'd take a walk outside and get some fresh air. Walked outside, realized I was still a little bit tipsy, and decided that, fuck it, I needed to be outside for a while until I sobered up. So I wandered around. I was in Hopkins, so I wandered past Fishburne field (long destroyed to make room for the new business school), past the library, around the quad, past the DUC (the student center), and to the gym, where I wandered up the the roof (where the tennis courts were located). From there, I had a really nice view of the Atlanta skyline (or what passes for it in this glorified three-goat town), and of much of the campus.
And I was alone. No security guards. No drunken couples on the tennis courts (really, surprising to not see one or the other, because the lack of the former should have encouraged the latter). I could watch the occasional car drive by, see a few folks stumbling up Frat Row. But no one saw me. For the first time since I'd been at Emory, I found a place where I felt Right. I must have spent an hour on the roof of the gym, walking around it a few times and just sitting there and gathering my thoughts. Afterwards, I wandered around the campus a bit more, and stayed awake until Cox Hall (in its pre-renovation days) opened up for breakfast. Then I headed back to watch the sunrise, and crashed hard immediately after.
That became my Saturday ritual, although I gradually started drinking less before the walks. On weeknights, I usually walked earlier, around one in the morning. The campus was just as dead. I'd see the occasional person, but it felt like the world was mine.
That's a feeling I haven't been able to reclaim since college. Emory, even with its location on Clifton, is still something of an island. With the exception of the neighborhood I lived in immediately before this one, none of the other places I've lived have even really felt isolated, and even the most isolated neighborhood has its share of traffic. And although I enjoy walking for its own sake at any time of the day, I don't get as much out of it when I have to dodge cars and other people.
Worse, there's the whole real world thing. It's great to stay up until all hours during college. Classes can be skipped. And even when you don't skip them, you can crash afterwards at one in the afternoon. In the real world, it's hard to get stuff done on a schedule like that. So I've pretty much relegated ever re-capturing that feeling to the old internal dream box.
But last night, for about ten minutes, I re-captured the feeling, or something like it. It was unexpected, but wonderful. Of course, on the walk back, there were a few dozen cars driving by. But One Moment of Perfect Beauty, as Kosh might have put it, isn't something that can be expected to last. Probably wouldn't have meant as much if it had, either.
It was a habit I developed in college. Freshman year, actually. Early second semester. I was drunk off my ass for maybe the fourth time in my life, on a combo of SoCo and bad beer. For the first time, though, I actually stayed awake until I was nearly sober. It was 3 in the morning. My roommate was snoring in his post-drunk sleep, I wasn't the slightest bit tired, and I was starting to suspect that getting drunk for the sake of getting drunk really wasn't the world's smartest behavior.
With nothing else to do, and no one else on my hall awake, I figured I'd take a walk outside and get some fresh air. Walked outside, realized I was still a little bit tipsy, and decided that, fuck it, I needed to be outside for a while until I sobered up. So I wandered around. I was in Hopkins, so I wandered past Fishburne field (long destroyed to make room for the new business school), past the library, around the quad, past the DUC (the student center), and to the gym, where I wandered up the the roof (where the tennis courts were located). From there, I had a really nice view of the Atlanta skyline (or what passes for it in this glorified three-goat town), and of much of the campus.
And I was alone. No security guards. No drunken couples on the tennis courts (really, surprising to not see one or the other, because the lack of the former should have encouraged the latter). I could watch the occasional car drive by, see a few folks stumbling up Frat Row. But no one saw me. For the first time since I'd been at Emory, I found a place where I felt Right. I must have spent an hour on the roof of the gym, walking around it a few times and just sitting there and gathering my thoughts. Afterwards, I wandered around the campus a bit more, and stayed awake until Cox Hall (in its pre-renovation days) opened up for breakfast. Then I headed back to watch the sunrise, and crashed hard immediately after.
That became my Saturday ritual, although I gradually started drinking less before the walks. On weeknights, I usually walked earlier, around one in the morning. The campus was just as dead. I'd see the occasional person, but it felt like the world was mine.
That's a feeling I haven't been able to reclaim since college. Emory, even with its location on Clifton, is still something of an island. With the exception of the neighborhood I lived in immediately before this one, none of the other places I've lived have even really felt isolated, and even the most isolated neighborhood has its share of traffic. And although I enjoy walking for its own sake at any time of the day, I don't get as much out of it when I have to dodge cars and other people.
Worse, there's the whole real world thing. It's great to stay up until all hours during college. Classes can be skipped. And even when you don't skip them, you can crash afterwards at one in the afternoon. In the real world, it's hard to get stuff done on a schedule like that. So I've pretty much relegated ever re-capturing that feeling to the old internal dream box.
But last night, for about ten minutes, I re-captured the feeling, or something like it. It was unexpected, but wonderful. Of course, on the walk back, there were a few dozen cars driving by. But One Moment of Perfect Beauty, as Kosh might have put it, isn't something that can be expected to last. Probably wouldn't have meant as much if it had, either.
