(idea) by stash Wed Feb 28 2001 at 21:14:19
Urban Night

  • It is three a.m. and I am walking a deserted city street in a residential neighborhood. Though unfamiliar, the place is well-lit; but I start to get a nervous feeling in my tummy, like I don't want to be out in the open. I'm not afraid of running into anybody but I want to be in a place where I don't have to watch my back. The nervous feeling rises in me and I quickly leap over the front hedge of a house. With my back to the bush I face a picture window, through which I can see the dim interior of a living room. Picture frames crowd the mantle, their contents dark and featureless. The perspective also affords me a narrow view down a hallway, glowing softly from a socket light. I can just make out a cracked doorway down there, spilling lamplight onto the hardwood floor. I mentally cross my fingers in hopes that the residents don't see me. Moments later, the street is bustling with dog-walkers, joggers, and others I can't identify by sound alone. Their streetlight shadows dance crazily on the house in front of me and I imagine that these abrupt pedestrians really are twenty feet tall with crooked legs that double in length with every step. I wring my hands and hope no one sees me.

  • My mother and I walk into an outdoor cellular phone shop, on the edge of a parking lot by a green belt. These are supposed to be the very latest innovations but they are all very large for cell phones. Most are the size of a big remote control and some have 17 inch lcd screens attached. I pull my own phone out for comparison and find it too is overly large. We leave the store when my mom is given a bag of special fertilizer, which just looks like a bag of dead plants to me. We spread it over a dead patch on the green belt, which is now our own lawn.

I like it!