the start of something new.

The concrete sidewalks were slick, but not flooded. Time to bring out the rain-boots.
Faded gray hoodie, and a white headband in my hair to cover up the mess underneath, I trudge to class with my head down. I don’t remember who I may have passed by on the way. Does it matter?

Yes.

Sitting in a lecture class, with approximately 200 other musty, wet, sweaty students was not my ideal Monday morning, but what else did I have to do?
I sit in the back, because this is where I am most comfortable - especially on a cold day like this.

Ansel Adams,
Man Ray,
Muybridge’s Zoopraxiscope,
Auguste and Louis Lumiere,
The Black Maria,
Portapaks,
and George Lucas.

Eventually I find myself walking again, with my head down. Music blasting in my ears. It’s a good beat, a solid beat to walk to. In no time I find myself back at my room’s doorway - lunch in my left hand, door-key in my right. I have 4 hours left before walking back out the door to another class.

Days of our Lives was on at 1 pm, as usual. I watch, connecting with certain characters, wishing I was one or two of them for a couple of minutes. So much intensity, drama, excitement. Which life is better though? Living through 1 hour of your life in total chaos, or 4 hours of well, nothing. I try to read a book. But my mind starts to wander as it usually does, and I fall asleep slowly - book across my chest.

And I’m dreaming, dreaming so hard my eyes hurt. I wake up because they hurt so bad. Like a headache in my eyelids. It was a good dream, I can tell you that. I remember the feeling I had waking up - pain and happiness. But I can not tell you what happened in the dream because I do not remember.

I walk out of my room with my head down. I sat next to him, the boy with headphones on and glazed-over eyes. The Silk Road and Alexander the Great does not make this boy alive. Not until he pulls out thin, strips of film from his binder do I finally see his eyes, his real eyes. Now he is alive. And for and hour he is lost in his photography - in the lines and shapes and leaves and people. You don’t have to know a person’s name to know what they love.

The concrete is now dry, but I am still wearing my black-and-white plaid rain-boots. Anticipation of rain? I enter the food court, ordering custom, steaming stir-fry. It was a good day for stir-fry. I like the chopsticks they have. Wooden, raw, a good grip. I push my way out of the food court, with my head down, out of the building and outside. I stop. It smells like wetness, rotting leaves, fresh winds. It’s fall today.

And even though the entrance to my building was only a few yards away,
I walked with my head up -

and I see the sky.