the night in my veins...

It's crawling up on morning and the sky finally cleared and the stars are so sharp, and hard, and brilliant. Sometimes I think of this time as mine,the time when the world is asleep and dreaming.It makes me think of the intersection that I lived beside in my last apartment.It was actually the second time I had lived in that building,thirteen years to the day apart.Both times the intersection drew me out of my house in the wee hours.It's a three-way crossroad that dead ends into Overton Park.It was completely deserted and nothing looked real in the light of the traffic signal.It felt like the world had been emptied out.It contrasted so deeply with the heavy traffic and bustle at any other time of the day or night.But between three thirty and four thirty in the morning,it was my private playground.I got a profound sense of peace sitting out on the sidewalk,looking up into the oak trees.In my adult life I never felt more safe than I did during that magic hour,when I had the world to myself for a little while.It's amazing how we find little pieces of the city and make them our own for a time,then drift off into a different neighborhood,and suddenly it belongs to the world again...But the magic hour,it stays with me,no matter where I am.