The cold
mist swirls around me this first night in June, stirring up a chill inside me
as I stroll these dark back streets of Hoboken
I have
not felt like this in year, this lingering tingle that spreads across my skin
from the moist air, recalling those days when I often walked in the dark and
cold, searching for something in my home town of Paterson I have yet to find
there or anywhere else.
This
place changes in reality if not in memory, as I stumble through newly
constructed canyons passed still unoccupied store fronts and upscale urban
mansions out of character with a place I first set foot on in the mid-1970s.
I keep
thinking of how I talked of change and how each wave migrating to this place
wants to preserve it as they find it when they first arrive, but manage only to
cling to pieces of what they found. Nearly all the pieces I found when I first
came are gone, but not the mood on such nights as these, this overwhelming
sense of isolation I feel with each footfall, the unseasonable chill working
down into my bones, stirring up old passions, and an ache as persistent as a
toothache, no aspirin can cure.
I am
haunted by the ghosts of change because I change so little, and stirred by
other people’s passions that raise hopes I have not felt for years.
Sometimes,
out of the mists, a light emerges that you don’t expect, glowing against the
dim backdrop so as to appear angel-like, although not saintly.
In my head,
I keep hearing the old Rolling Stones song, about sympathy for the devil, and
wonder if heads is tails and whether bad is good, and on which side do I end
up.
And
then, I climb into my car, immune again to the midst, turn on the stereo,
listening to Springsteen sing about the darkness at the edge of town and
understand exactly what he means.
