The Lull

Stepping out into the night he stands at the end of the walk and lights up a smoke. Pause. Listening. There is silence in the streets, not a soul around. He considers for a moment hopping into the car for his errand. A moment standing in the street. Thinking. Smoking. The only sound is his ragged breathing and the rustle of his clothing. Music in his head. Something by Siouxsie and the Banshees. Something from 1979 that reminds him of the moment in his life when he first started getting interested in something other than his action figures. It was January. 1979. He was visiting a friend for the holidays. It was cold. Well below 20c. He was living in Texas for the last few years after spending most of his ten years in Cowtown. His parents decided they should visit the old hometown for the x-mas season and further decided that he was to spend this time with his closest friend. He liked this. It was the best x-mas in years. His best friend played some records for him on the days when they weren’t outside building snow forts and hurling icy missiles at each other. He introduced him to The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and a few other bands. The music was different from anything he had ever heard before. It seemed to capture the manic insanity of emotions that were assailing him at that time in his life. Capture that insanity and quell it. He found when he listened to the music, everything around him vanished, and in that four minutes or less, he was able to live eternities. Closing his eyes he saw colours, forming, imploding, birthing, dying. In his head the notes came alive. In his head the notes calmed him. He a long drag of his Navy Cut Player’s Light. The decision comes. He is walking. He takes little notice of the lack of traffic on the block. There rarely is a great deal of activity on the side street where he lives. He passes the silver Honda Civic belonging to the neighbour two doors down. He lets his eyes slowly slide over the deep silver after-market paint job, pausing at the sleek curves of the custom carbon fibre hood, the clean lines of the seventeen-inch five-spoke rims, and the abrupt double slash of the aluminium and carbon fibre wing. All around him, the city roars to life once again.