Halls Long Since Walked

Halls Long Since Walked
With the lights off and the AC up, the illusion of a subterranean hideaway springs to mind. The flashing lights and screaming voices only add to the appearance. After dark, the curtain on the window goes up, providing the soft light of a distant and extinguished sunset. Often, the single fluorescent light in the room will stay dimmed until its presence is absolutely necessary, and even then, the light is slow to wink on, like some mournful, just-awakened giant, murder the harsh light in his eye.

A creaking descends from the frame of the bed above my desk--I feel the fear rise, and suppress it mercilessly. Other sounds pervade the room--the soft whisper of an argument shouted days ago, the ticking of keys, like small insects across a kettle drum, the shuffle of meaningless and needed papers, forever entangled and unintelligible. Occasionally, the soft music made for lonesome souls plays from the corner, or the hardened rock for jaded souls.

The air carries the tang of air conditioning and of time wasted. Across the hall, the smell of toilet paper and showers makes itself known. The smell of homework done and undone plays against the smell of mental strain and physical restlessness.

"I'm going for a walk, man."

"Don't get lost. You have that project to finish yet."

"I know."

How can this place feel like home? How could a cubbyhole on the sixth floor of a residence hall somehow make me 'belong'? Why do the sights and the sounds and the smells make me feel like there could be no other place like this, this place of learning and relaxation, this fortress of solitude, this bastion of companionship in times of trouble, this home away from home?



I wander out and down the hall to the stairs. I have long since memorized the flights, counted the steps, wondered at who and why and how many passed this way. The spray paint marks of the fourth floor, the trash on the grating one half a flight down, the "Restricted Access" Computer Science house, the strange electrical box on two, the crushed, mangled and long-since dried up Flintstones Push pop on the flight before the bottom, and the door that sticks on the way out, but never on the way in.

To the sundial an hour slow my mind wanders, seeking the answers to questions no one's never asked. To the left, Gracie's passes by, the food-producing leviathan of the campus depths. A low-flying 747 roars, and a high-flying bird disappears into the trees lining the Quarter Mile. Past the frat houses and their makeshift pools, past the signs that tell everyone where to go and when to pledge, past all those guys smoking away their dreams and lives. I move past them. I wander between the gym and the August Center, and over the bridge. Ahead, the soft rise of the Quarter Mile puts the quad into some wholly separate plane of existence. And yet I move past it all. The last gleams of the fallen sun sparkle off my dreams, the knight on horseback a glimmer in the corner of my eye, the newborn sun at the center of someone else's universe on the other side, and somewhere behind and yet beyond my sight ahead, their waits the woman of my dreams, and so the star lights the way, and the knight guides my hand, and a woman yet unmet draws me forward, ever towards the future, ever towards the gleaming infinity, slowly spinning.