Ctrl+A.
Ctrl+C.
Ctrl+V.
Finally. I shut my laptop and stared at the red curtain for a second, hearing the gasping of the window plastic behind it. Ever since I installed it yesterday, using more duct tape than the instructions called for, my room has come alive. It inhales and exhales into crinkly lungs with deep irregular gasps. When it’s 10:40 pm on a Sunday night there are a couple options. Sleep, read, make tea, do some nighttime yoga, watch TV, take a walk. I hadn’t been outside all day so I pulled on my black winter coat, green CVS facemask, head buff, and worn leather skate sneakers to take a quick walk outside.
Cold, coLD, COLD. It hit my nose first. With my first exhale my glasses became iced whisky jars. Gravel crunched with ice underfoot as I shuffled along, up the steep concrete sidewalk.
Going out at night, alone, always makes me pause. My first thoughts are always of that one Krav Maga self-defense class I took in my sophomore year, trying to remember the punches and ways to get out of a chokehold. Force up through the arms and push DOWN. Break their grip. Yeah. Something like that. Instinct will take over?
I made my way to the top of the sidewalk and pushed my mask below my nose to better see and feel. Medford sparkled below, lights from houses, buildings, the highway, a thousand twinkling LEDs and fluorescent shooting their way through space and air. Cars, illegally parked on the road that’s supposed to be for just students and faculty. But no cop is going to be giving tickets between 1 am — 7 am. The have better things to be doing, I hope. Parking tickets don’t exist in snowstorms either.
Despite the night, the cold, the lights, it’s…quiet…and…still. A lone figure comes down the hill far along the sidewalk to the left and for a second I think he’s running. But no, maybe just coming back from the library, after finishing writing an essay comparing 20th century Marxism to the inner workings of a cell. It’s all the same, y’know? Selfless acts and machine-like precision. Working together for a single cause.
High above me the dorms rise. Did Tufts give out fairy lights to every sophomore? Was it a rite of passage to tape them up to walls and windows? Or is everyone desperate for a little more warmth and light in these biting, lonely, and isolated months? A brick and glass rectangle of a Christmas tree. Smart students, avoiding the glaring white examination lights that somehow pass as “common area” lighting. When everyone really knows you’ll go rat-lab crazy if you’re underneath them for too long.
I continue along the narrow, sloping sidewalk. Passing no one, seeing no one. Shades are drawn and curtains are closed. All that’s visible is the yellow warm light that kind of oozes out from around the drawn shades. I like to imagine on the inside, groups of housemates sit and drink hot chocolate or mulled cider, maybe playing scrabble or Settlers of Catan. One window is open, and I see a cat leap down from its perch on the sill, maybe warning its owner to quickly shut the door, for life moveth outside! and its best to wait until the morning to confront the world (might as well close your NYT and CNN, nothing is going to get better tonight, dear).
Somehow the sky never draws me upwards. If anything it casts downward, insulating and coating. The sky in Boston is sick. Point source and non-point source light pollution gather in masses above the city to decide what color to turn the dark sky tonight. Some days it’s more yellow, others gray. I can count the number of stars with just my fingers and toes. But tonight my glasses and hat and facemask draw me downwards to the sidewalk.
51 Winthrop is ahead, shining. A latticework of wood window gently and firmly divides the yellow light into squares to beam out into the darkness. To illuminate some corner of these streets and houses and storm drains. Reaching the intersection, I notice Espresso Pizza is still open. All men inside. Sitting on benches in the booths, spread out, in blue disposable masks, waiting for a pepperoni or Italian sausage pizza. Why is it that guys are the only ones who I ever see get the late night pizza there? Peak hours between 10 pm and 12 am (whoever taught them that is was breakfast, lunch, dinner, pizza?). Now passing Tamper, all closed up for the night, Gnomon Copy, dark as well, and the campus mini mart that charges almost as much as the tourist convenience stores in downtown Madrid. Three brightly lit neon red signs announce “Open.”
It’s dark and I’m getting chilled. I want to keep walking because the words and the ideas are flowing and step by step over this icy, gravelly, slippery sidewalk I’m slowly understanding why the sky is profoundly yellow and what fairy lights make up for. But it’s late. And tomorrow has no time for lateNightWanderingEpiphanies. So I turn my feet homeward, up the steep sidewalk, towards bed, towards blankets, and a cup of peppermint tea.
