Sunrise

“We all change, when you think about it. We’re all different people all through our lives. And that’s OK, that’s good, you gotta keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be.” – 11^th Doctor, regeneration speech, “Doctor Who”

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…Except that I want to walk. Just walk.

I have walked the streets, of Montrose I mean, for so very many years now. All my blog posts have been planned on the streets. Basically all. And I know things, like this Shake Shack used to be a Burger King, and a Schlotzsky’s used to be over there, while this over here used to be Mary’s with its iconic mural. Everything’s changed during my walking.

No, I don’t want to write about Katy anymore (4 a.m.).

I don’t want to write about Nasreen (5 a.m.).

I just want to walk.

I live in the place where Houston’s downtown grid meets its city grid. The angles, the degree of angles of the streets, I nearly said angels, all crash together like someone dropped one atop the other, and it’s a liminal place and this is where my ideas come.

Papa Merlyn hobbles up and his mane is blue again and his legs are crisscrossed like these streets and he’s leaning on his tree branch staff with the magic glyphs. “Harry, did you hear the phantom singing on Pacific Street tonight?” I have not heard the phantom singing on Pacific Street tonight. I am walking and trying to plan this blog post. My mind will empty and clear, eventually, and I’ll grab hold of an image, a single image, maybe a snake or a broken key or else a Current 93 lyric, and then my post will come. It will emerge. Yes, that’s what I mean, “emerge”.

This blog is going to change. “The Rise and Fall of Harry Hamid.” O not the character, not me, it’s too late for that now, but the blog, you see. I want to change what it is and what I write, for next year, and I will keep on with my walking until I know how.

I know this, over here, used to be the Meteor Lounge. That used to be F Club. That over there was Late Night Pie until the owners burned it down for the insurance money and got busted. This stretch is what I call “Lizard Way” because, in the summer, in the heat, lizards will run by the dozens when I walk, from the bit of the grass along the curb, across the sidewalk, into the yards.

The lizards, I mean. Not me. I keep out of the yards always.

Someday soon, this will all be gone. I see that and clearly. It’ll all be townhomes and yuppie bars and I’ll still be blogging but my blogging will be different, too. Different how still is less clear.

I’m going to keep walking. Walk and watch the changes come, like when Adri changed to Katy changed to Nasreen changed to just me.

It’s 2019 almost. Sunrise.

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“It's no big deal, it's just… we have to go away and... and dream it all up again.” – Bono at the end of the last show of The Joshua Tree tour, 1989