The Blasted Heath

I like to venture out at like 4-5 in the morning if I've been up all night. I enjoy a simple driving adventure that ends in donuts. I did this for the first time in Austin the other day, and on the way home I got to see my new neighborhood in an abandoned, street-light illuminated lonesomeness. At one point I had to "flip a pancake", or perform an ill-begotten u-turn, and veered into a parking lot. I was in a shopping center with maybe 5 stores in it. They included a Beauty parlor, a jersey store, a liquor store, and 2 other unrecognizable ones. The cement was cracked, and a row of dead trees lined the eastern border. The western one opened into a byway which connected it to a larger shopping center. Cracked sidewalk and garbage were the order of the day - I could almost see a rat inside a tumbleweed - a blasphemous urban hamster ball. I realized at this time that the area I live in is *kind of* sketchy. It's not really dangerous, it just seems abandoned.

Down the street from my house is an ubiquitous "FOOD MART" (only blocks away from "MAJOR BRAND GAS," no joke). I had visited a couple times to buy soda, or a huge bag of cookies, which costs $1. The last time I went there, there was a small piece of paper taped to the glass door. It was a note, written in the kind of severe boldface that showed the anger of the writer even though a sharpie was used. It read:

"ONLY 2 STUDENTS AT A TIME"

I tried to understand what this could have meant. Was it to prevent shoplifting, by keeping cunning young people from running a 3-man scam? What if the kids weren't students, though? Would a student ID be required to be kicked out of the store? What if you lost your ID? What about general students of knowledge? I really think there is a piece to this puzzle I am missing. Maybe they have a special discount there on high-gravity wine drinks. Any serious student prepares for the SAT with plenty of NIGHT TRAIN. Also homework.

This place would be a Godsend in those small hours when the total understanding of Physics 1 relies on changing modes of consciousness. Cast in the light of the Night Train, one cannot help but vivisect the laws of the universe into hard formulae.

Speed times time equals something. The universe. Matter.

It all comes as fast as a train in the night.

I got through school by killing my mind, to an extent. Not with alcohol, though, with something that was either willpower or a lack of willpower. Where discipline begins and giving up on your aspirations ends is a line I was too busy to worry about crossing. Sometimes the wounds of those years upon my creative capacity neutralizes the money I earned from having a degree. Perhaps if I would have had a store with Night Train near me, I would be different. Wondering doesn't pay, though, and it wouldn't have worked anyway. I had a strict rule in college about entering convenience stores only in groups of 3+.

The "Food Mart" sits in a small parking lot. It's next door to a house, and its other neighbor is a barbed-wire fence which protects, apparently, 50 square yards of grass. Invariably there is a car parked in the middle of the lot, nowhere near a designated space. I've nicknamed this store "The Blasted Heath."

I wish I could stay in this neighborhood past July. I have to leave, again, sell all my stuff and hit the road for an indefinite period. I feel that the apex of existence is to thrive in a community, but in the absence of that, I will take familiar locations and sketched half-landmarks.