halcyon on and on and on

i found a cassette tape that had been prepared for me by an old friend. it was wedged among the rest of my obsolete tapes in a dusty wood crate. i needed unknown music. i needed to run. i needed to burst out of that place faster than a firework. it was snowy oustide and i underestimated the ability of my bodyheat: black stretch yoga pants & my ripped purdue rosebowl sweatshirt. i popped femme fatale into my walkman and slammed the door behind me. marius probably stirred a little & this was back in the day before candace lived next to me. i took off running north toward the b'hai. the snow was sleety and it crunched under my feet and seeped through my shoes. as pink floyd flowed into bjork i found myself running faster and sloppier- cutting through the fields elizabeth & i loved to dance through and shout and sing and laugh. i ran like i was running away from someone- past the chain linked fences near the evanston hospital and over the grated bridge next to the b'hai. 

it was the last song on the tape that tackled my woundup mind to the sidewalk. it wasnt even the entire song- just the first two minutes of an eight minute acoustical montage. halcyon on & on & on & on. i had never listened to the entire tape before so this song stopped me somewhere between ridge and sherman. i rewound rewound rewound trying to fully capture what this song physically altered in me until i exploded and had to walk home. the sleet turned back into snow and when i burst through the doors to our lobby i found mazen standing there checking his mail. we shared an uncomfortable & shallow hello before scuttling away from each other as though our exchange metamorposed us into cockroaches or earwigs.

later that afternoon at ennui coffee house elizabeth might have read faulkner and i probably should have been reading white teeth. instead i was drawing halcyon on & on & on & on frame by frame from my mind. elizabeth, with the rest of my february ghosts, eventually drifted away from my consciousness and i was on & on & on. back in my apartment i expected jimbo & elizabeth to retrieve me for some party or another but i couldnt bear to answer their knocks at my door. i just turned up the volume of feed the tree louder and louder drowning out the two people who were so good to me. i wanted the walls and ceiling and floor to vibrate from the noise. i wanted things upstairs to shake and fall down. i wanted me and my apartment to shake out old life like a wet dog shakes the pond water out of his coat. & on & on & on & on.