The flashing lights.

My eyes blink. Every time my eyes blink there is a flash of light. So much so that I have to sometimes keep one eye open to see if I miss the lightning every time my eyes blink.

But it’s not the lightning.

It looks like lightning and it acts like lightning.

So, the train rattles by deep in the night and the lightning subsides in my eyes. I wonder which part transforms the good nights into great nights. The obvious answer might be drink. And it might be the spontaneous kind of drinking that tiny Asian girls do over on McFarland Avenue. I see them there from time to time and it’s always funny to watch them walk home. They tend to forget that home is just across the street and wander around for about five minutes drunk on three and one half cans of Budweiser, feeling no pain. The ascent up the stoop is the fait accompli for them. They are inside before they realize it has taken place.

I know what this means.

The funny thing about this time of year is the flux.

Nothing has ever been as true as a soft voice singing “people come and go” at a makeshift coffee house. The song was unimportant. I was unimportant. But the truth is always important and that particular truth reverberates across hill and dale.

This is the time of flux down by the avenues and up by the brown buildings. Flux brings hope. Hope brings joy and joy brings, well, we can’t rightly say just yet. The big, brown buildings don’t know. They are being scraped and cleaned. They are being prepared for the first act and this flux is merely the second round of rehearsals. The first act can only happen if the big, brown buildings are scraped, cleaned and prepared for that act. They must be prepared for the chill of the autumn and the huge influx of hope.

Hope is a man’s best friend.

Or was that fear?

Never you mind, from where you stand sir, you will find out soon enough.