jack_babalon | Terminus: Kirkwood in November (Reply)

"Something`s starting today
Where did he go? why you wanted to be?
Well you know, November has come
When it`s gone away..."
~November has come, The Gorillaz

On Thursday I rode back into Kirkwood for photo-recon work. Banking right on Hosea, instead of left, hoping to avoid the runaway dogs and lingering cop prowls of the day before. The Magpie accompanied me on the ride, turning the shoot into a 'Bike-Club' caper. During the last two hours of light in the day we managed to somehow pedal down Dekalb a mile or so, cross under the tracks and squeeze in an itinerary that included: A little cemetary tucked away down a quiet street, a derelict wharehouse, a series of dirt and wood forts built in front of an abandoned two story home, a forgotten bike trail, a hither to unknown park and rows of old Victorians soaking in an melancholy sunset.

It was a strange and sad day, one charged with the diffused light, the mounting cold, the quiet ports we glided into as well as some tragic news recently received. We had both heard of the recent passing of a 'brother-in-arms' from our mutual theatre circles. I didn't know him as well as my friend, but I had worked with the man during the Hunter Thompson tribute a few years back and found him to be a man of grounded energy, filled with creative wit and crackling with a lanky charisma.

Yet there was something soothing about the expedition. The chance to indulge in a spontaneous curiosity that send us in slipping through cracked windows and traversing over fences. A chance to be ghost hunters, urban archaelogists, adventurers, psychogeographers... but mainly the chance to be children again in that sense of finding awe in the buried places, in fidning games out of the random chances of the world around us.

Anyway... it is my hope you will forgive me my autumn nostalgia, my dusk shadowed tombs and sunset flavored foliages. I never outgrew my fondness for Romanticism it would seem and as such am prone to linger a little too long on things as simple as seasons, the weather, the time of day and forgotten places. There is so much more out there to record, I know... and I hope some day to have the talent to do so.

Alright, off to get my front tire fixed and prepare for V's party.