The benefits of late night walks in the city: quiet streets, a forgiving darkness, no people cluttering up the landscape, night blooming flowers, time to think. I like taking the last dog walk at midnight. Sometimes, when the moon is dark I spook myself a little too easily looking at menacing foliage and sinister convergences of shadows, but I've got a large animal with me who would put off any casual disturber of my peace so it's only the equivalent of monsters under the bed. I rarely meet anyone out after 11. The streets are mine, and Dixie's.
I think about ghosts, the people of my emotional past who've left me or been left behind. The fellow I saw at the Worldcon, for instance; it saddens me to think of him, yet he and the two former friends of mine who slid into drug addiction are no longer important to me except as cautionary tales. Other ghosts are more real to me, the ones who died too early and too suddenly. My heart still aches when I think of Dave Clements who was very dear to me, almost my best friend, and who was brutally murdered in July, 1985. I miss Karen Trego, sometimes wondering why I haven't heard from her in so long. "Oh," I say dumbfounded, grief-stricken, when I remember, "oh, she's dead." Cancer won in 1990. I can't remember Terry Carr's voice any more yet I dated him for more than a year. An aneurism took him away in April, 1987, and I sobbed on John Foyster's shoulder when asked to talk about Terry that month in Australia. I thought my heart would break when each of them passed on. Walking in the dark makes it a little easier to think about them without stress, a safe and quiet time to remember their lives instead of their deaths.
I don't miss my mother particularly. She died in 1985. Sometimes I think I should, I say to Dixie as she sniffs a bush carefully, but the fact is I don't. I never understood her, and although I loved her as a child she set me at a distance for seven long, distressing years as an adult, and I reciprocated. I cried the weekend she died, and not again.
We set off for another bush, and I think about how I learned to say goodbye when people no longer wanted me in their life, or were bad for me, or simply couldn't be bothered to maintain a friendship. Those small deaths hurt terribly, although they were only virtual. Deciding to let go is a difficult lesson. I've hated admitting someone wasn't keeping up their end of things emotionally. It's never happened to me in a relationship, but it's sure as heck happened to friendships. I've been a bad friend, but my errors resulted from caring too much and trying too hard. Harsh lessons there. Maybe I still haven't learned them properly. I assume anyone I deem worthy of my friendship will value me equally. My mistake has ever been to assume the value remains constant on either side. It's to do with my desire for life to hold still, I imagine. Let x =1. Let faith and hope displace despair and apathy. Let love matter.
Dixie wags her tail as I muse, waiting patiently for me to notice she's done. I wiggle her ears for her, enjoying the soft silky fur, and we continue our midnight patrol. The ghosts drift along behind as I follow her golden shape through the dark. I wonder how many people will remember me when I'm gone. The cool night breeze smells of jasmine, and memory.
