dimanche 2 septembre 2007

Escape to Normalcy

So, I've discovered why I need to read happy, lighthearted, the-protagonist-is-always-all-good children's literature. Today, in London, I decided to go for a run. I'm staying at Alain's which is in a suburb, with meandering brick and gravel paths occasionally jetting you through some field of blackberry bushes or a little wooden bridge carrying you over a canal with water lillies. So, I'm running along discovering one delight after another, when it occurs to me that I am the only human around. My footsteps on the gravel become the soundtrack to a horror film. I slow to a walk near the deserted preschool playground. From somewhere far off I can here kids screaming in a game of soccer. Everything is perfectly still. Except my heart, which keeps pounding away as if I had not stopped running. I tell myself I'm nuts, it's Sunday, of course no one's about. See, just a lovely day in the forest. But it doesn't help. The mossy grey fence posts that seemed so picturesque only a moment before now snicker at me as they dance among the tall green weeds surely hiding something sinister. Somehow the solid metal razor scooter laying in the middle of a courtyard of bricks looks limp, like someone has dragged its life, the child, from it and left it there to die. I hear footsteps ahead. A young man is walking his dog. He calls the dog to him. I say hello. He says nothing. I start jogging again, along the edge of a park. Now I can see the kids playing. It's a birthday party. I let my arms dangle and bounce for a moment laughing that I have managed to scare myself. But as I jog past a man and say hello again, I realize he looks as if he could be mentally ill. I decide against going down another deserted path completely tunneled by brambles and turn instead toward the party. I sit on the grass nearby and stretch. A woman reads her book on a bench. The young man comes back with his dog and they play fetch. The little dog runs for the ball each time, but often forgets to pick it up before bouncing back to his master. It looks like rain. I decide to head home. But, where, exactly is home? I was so enthralled with injecting evilness into the quaint cottages and meandering pathways that I did not pay attention to where I was going. I follow my nose. Ah, yes, here is the hill with the stairs I ran up. See, a typical suburb like I know at home. Dads out with their kids. But besides my delusions, there are signs of the city even here. Beer bottles and empty cigarette boxes lie scattered on the ground. I dash past the preschool and find my way back to the canal. It isn't long before I am back, well exercised, in Alain's spacious apartment where his room mates are babbling away while they cook lunch and hang their laundry about the house to dry. I open my happy children's book, (thank goodness I finished Harry Potter already) and escape into the mind of someone more sane than myself.

1 commentaire:

shaun a dit…

Wow. Nicely done, Hillary.