November 23rd, 2022 - starting at 6:17 pm and ending at 8:50 pm but who knows these things really
The pavement extended before me like a concrete carpet, bending and declining into the dim opaque curtain of mist that hung as a thin fabric marking the border of this stage. Trash bins sat attentively, lining the curbs. My eyes were drawn to the sickly branches of inverted roots that twisted and curled their writhing fingers up at the black firmament above. Many still grasped fiery autumnal leaves that flickered faintly in the cold pacific night. I moved between dead beacons on route to my sister’s house. It could have also been my parent’s. The destination was somewhat irrelevant. I was enamored with this frozen place, even as it unnerved me. I knew that it was transitory and hostile to my loitering. Still, I couldn’t resist the urge to photograph. I didn’t know if I would ever be here again. The spotlight sat briefly in this pocket of space. I could feel myself being drained by wispy sharpened fingers that slid themselves through my hair and across my cheeks, viciously pulling back the skin on my face so that my eyelids narrowed and my vision became watery. As I moved, these claws then snatched at my ankles and wrapped themselves through the belt loops of my jeans. I found that if I crossed under the canopy of a dead beacon, their tendrils recoiled instantly, but the regained momentum would propel me forward like a slingshot, and I’d zip through these lights, tossed from one end of the darkness to the other. I stopped briefly to admire the warm glow of a kitchen window that sat above a climbing mound of ivy bushes. To its right was another window of some other room. Sitting side by side on the wall of this house, they appeared to me like bright yellow eyes, unblinking and frozen in thought.