A neighbor hangs constellations and illuminates the night.
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Tonight, I am a bit of a flâneur. I had a destination and planned on returning from where I departed, but I took streets I don’t normally walk and oxbowed from the most direct route.
I am bundled up in a sweatshirt, coat, and knit cap, over and in addition to my athletic pants and T-shirt. I resemble the homeless guys who wander these same streets, except that I’m domesticated by the dog on the other end of the leash I hold.
The doors of houses in the neighborhood are adorned with Seahawks banners and University of Washington wreaths. Front room windows are filled with television sets that are like altars, with the priests and priestesses of sitcoms and game shows enacting rites and rituals of the culture for those who gather in front of them. The colored light spills out into the streets, all of it thick, rich, and saturated in the fall twilight, where the same light would be brighter, cleaner, crisper if it were a summer evening.
As I near home, I am drawn like a moth toward the amber light of my own porch, a beacon in the blue and purple shadows.
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