Places

The arena is empty except for one person, he’s shooting hoops facing the door. There must be something special about this basketball court, or this athlete; I passed the other gym on my way into the ARC, and it was full of people playing basketball together. The arena seems to large for one person. All of the seats are empty, but not absent. The lack of an audience still seems to see the basketball player, like the empty seats are watching his efforts. He reminds me of a musician, practicing his songs in a quiet room. The arena is for many to watch and one, or a few, to perform.

I need coffee. Upstairs, they’re all out, and this is a crisis. It’s late morning? I go to the Grind like I always do: I race through the tables, they’re in the way of my caffeine and they slow me down like hurdles on a track. The t.v. is on, someone is watching, someone is studying and trying not to watch, and for me it’s all background noise. Order, no room for cream please, smile at the coffee boy, sip the coffee fast. Then, I can sit down. I can relax and talk to my roommate, who got pulled here by my coffee needs. Everyone sitting around-they were hurdles before- was brought here by the my habit, but it’s theirs, instead. And we share that, sitting in the coffee chairs.

I shouldn’t have come to the shoe tree during the day, that isn’t The Time. Although no one has ever specified that there is A Time. But you just know. You go to the shoe tree in the middle of the night. The stars are winking, the black night envelopes you, and you feel alive when you whip those shoes off, tie them together, and throw them back to the great tree. They land perfectly on the shoe branches on the first throw, of course. The tree is the perfect place. It’s always growing. You leave behind your sacred memory, and the memories grow behind you as you and everyone else leaves their secrets behind. During this sleepy afternoon. Everyone passes the tree. They walk to their classes and dorms, and no one even looks at the tree. It just is, existing. No one would dare see the shoe tree now, but everyone knows its secrets.

St. Mary’s Hall is closed. Which I expected- there is no lecture or performance now. With nothing to watch, the stage is closed and empty. Inside, it’s more intimate than the arena. The focus is on the stage, the high ceilings rise above you… but you are right next to the where the performer should be. The seats are not raised so that you feel separate. But still, there is a place to be watched, and seats to sit when you are watching.

The Private inn at Historic is museum? Which is strange, considering that it was a hub of conversation once. The political elite of Maryland ate there, drank there, slept there. The tourists amble through in the breezy, sunny hallway, and it’s much like the grind would be if it were reduced to a fact sheet. The coffee would be gone, the t.v. off, people would give no more purpose to it but as an oddity, a remnant of a weird coffee culture. All the life would be sucked out of it, like the inn is now.

“He is made one with Nature: there is heard

His voice in all her music, from the moan

Of thunder, to the song of night’s sweet bird;

He is a presence to be felt and known

In darkness and in light, from herb and stone”

The afternoon is pleasant. Somehow I forgot that on Sunday afternoons, churchgoers leave next to the graveyard. A little girl asked why my feet are bare, I told her the grass is soft. You can feel the earth better when your feet touch it. I’m sitting on the bench, by the marker. Even in the sunlight, it isn’t hot. Just comfortable. Someone has added to the marker since I was here last; there is a chunk of driftwood, and an angel statuette with small glistening hands. The oyster shells still line the marker, and I find it incredible that this spirit is so loved. It’s much like the tree- the memory of Justin is left behind, resides there. But his love is always growing, in the beautiful days, the swimmers passing by, the soft grass, the little girls in church dresses, the father teaching history in the graveyard, the rain that runs down the hill to greet the river, the oyster shells that are given as tokens, and the angel with the shimmering hands.

“There is heard His voice in all her music.”