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I miss you, Carlsbad. I had the chance to plumb your depths only briefly, penetrating only as deep as you would let me.
Next time, I hope to have your knowing guidance as you take me on a tour of your nether regions.
Your mind goes, “mmmmmmmm” when you slide between smooth clean sheets for the first time.
“mmmmmmmmm.”
The bed is freshly made, correctly, and thus: a fitted sheet followed by a sheet, concluded with the usual filler blanket and the heavy quilt on top. The bed vibrated with mmmmm potential energy. The kind of energy that you instantly know will lend itself to a good nights sleep.
Sandwiched by high thread count, I felt content. My body filled the space between sheets with heat. The warm beige sheets rest on me, under me, above me, equally smothering and freeing. Frowningly, the quilt muscles its way into conscious thought, and I shift my weight to the left, to the right, testing the boundaries and establishing the perimeter; beyond which only lies the arctic, a wintry landscape of darkest night and cold limbs.
Lying still, to best occupy the island of warmth, my big toe rubs a staccato rhythm against the fabric, feeling each tiny groove in the cotton and marveling at how the whole thing hangs together, thousands and millions of threads, strings, atoms, particles, all in one place at the same time, for me, for the bed, for you. And it still holds, and will tomorrow and the next day, until the dark comes and unravels it.
Above me the lurid red glow of two EXIT signs make the room far more sinister than during the bright New Mexico day, when the sun shines through the windows and you can almost imagine children playing in these old, long empty dorms. The shouts and laughter of children still echo in this empty space, unseen drafts the only remnants of their young energy.
I sleep in the living room, adjacent to the kitchen, in what must have been the dorm mothers’ (or fathers’) room, that unknown caretaker who watched over a long hallway of now-empty dorm rooms. It is said that ghosts haunt this place, this palimpsest of three storied life, each floor holding young occupants of New Mexico School of the Deaf who are now most certainly well within their teens and twenties.
Even the wary security man who woke me up yesterday morning seemed to crouch somewhat inside himself, warding off the emptiness of the place with gruff candor as he let me know that maintenance would be working during the day. He shuffled off, door closing behind him as the sunlight flashed and pulsed in the room.
The large LED scroll sign-cum-clock reads 12:13 AM as I write this, feeling chills course up my body as I imagine things going bump in the night, ghostly laughter (actually heard by Adam’s classmate Ashley), and the strange sense that this place has energy left over from its past life, energy that will be changed forever when the renovations begin in earnest.
My heart skips a beat when I think about getting up and looking behind me, around me, for any sign that this place is haunted, haunted like my grandfather occasionally haunts my family, signaling his presence with lights that snap on and off abruptly (I love and miss you, Grandfather).
I’m going now, going to the restroom and dive into bed—may Fortune favor me with a good night’s sleep and friendly spirits.
The empty BART station cupped us in its yellow embrace as we stood, waiting, for the next train. It would not come for ten minutes, dooming us to glance, glance, glance at the digital sign that declared variously 1) no trains were headed to San Francisco, 2) escalators were offline, and 3) that the next train was 10, 39 minutes en route.
Glance. Nine minutes. Glance. Still nine minutes. It was a moment where you recognized the act of waiting. Then you thought back to all the moments where you waited. Then you waited. Eight minutes. Then the train was suddenly there with a quiet roar.
We were headed into San Francisco for a party, a gathering, to a auto-da-fé of pizza, burning in a wood oven. Happy birthdays were given, drinks were received, and conversation slathered like sauce on bread. Red sauce on pasta, even.
The zeitgeist of the evening was Zeitgeist, where barely acceptable Damnation was shared and we waited for Godot (in the form of the Tamale Lady). She did not show but it did not prevent us from waiting.
Afterwards, back on the BART, a ruby-faced Ruby hacker accosted us in a green cape with a butterfly on the lapel, with green eyes. He signed to us, “Are you a group or are you just friends?” Stumbling over his words, his sign language stuttered and started amid weirdly surreal smiles. He came from every Dungeons and Dragons game ever known. He wore himself like a cloak.
Once on the train again, the memory of Green Cloak fading, we spoke of stalkers and sign language.
