I woke around midnight to the sound of total quiet. It's loud, total quiet is. Back home in the SoDu, I would associate it with someone who is intentionally making no noise outside my bedroom door. Here, at the southeastern end of North Carolina--on a clear day, we can see all the way to Morocco--it's just the sound that's left when the sea breezes blow the creaks and goons of the fishing fleet up the Cape Fear River to Wilmington.
Standing at the porch railing, the cool breeze on my face, I feel an ancient call--the call to come into the darkness and see the world in a different light. Walking the streets under the boughs of ancient oaks is not the same experience in the dark that it is each morning and evening when I take my constitutional. It's just a little spooky. They do ghost tours here as they do in all colonial-era communities.
I dressed quickly but not carelessly because it would be an insult to startle another night visitor, encountered by chance on my outing if I were badly dressed. My outfit is dark gray, the most stealthy color for the night. Never wear black if you want to remain unseen because the night isn't black, it's a collage of dark grays. If being discovered badly dressed is insulting to another visitor, or homeowner for that matter, it would be embarrassing to be questioned by an officer of the law and this is something to take into consideration when planning to survey the filming of a TV program from the rooftops of a coastal village.
As far as I know, and I haven't made an exhaustive search, but as far as I know, it isn't unlawful to traverse the rooftops. Ms. Wonder would know but I hesitate to ask because what I do is traditional with me and I love tradition.
It is more than tradition that compels me to climb and look down upon, for I have come to Southport to find answers to questions to puzzling questions. Questions like why have tortoises never developed a philosophy and why do I feel like one of the sacrificial goats when it comes to religion and why didn't my vet talk to me about feline idiopathic chronic cystitis? If you wonder why Southport then I'm afraid you have me in deep waters there. I don't understand it myself but Wonder assures me that if I can find the answers anywhere, I will find them here. It is perhaps this promise that keeps sleep away tonight.
So this is it. The first night in Southport. Dressed in my dark gray qigong clothes, I lift one leg over the railing and grab the support post to descend to street level. I prefer using downspouts for this maneuver but the house I'm in has none. When I began my rooftop explorations years ago, many of the buildings still had waterspouts made of tile. Those pipes would support an elephant. Those were the good old days.
Once on the ground, I moved quickly through the shadows, ever vigilant for late-night dog walkers. They do exist. A half-block from the High Street, I found what I was looking for, a sturdy drainpipe that led to a flat roof overlooking the riverfront park where the film crew is busy. Eureka! The principle of displacement.
There was a real breeze now, as refreshing as a cool shower and I was encouraged to quicken my pace. It was quite dark, not black but almost, but I didn't hesitate--I went straight to my work, hand over hand, foot over foot until I reached the end of the pipe only to realize that it wasn't all there. In the darkness, I grabbed air and the follow-through almost loosened my grip completely.
Ms. Wonder has early and often pointed out the difference between improbable and impossible and she has remarked just as often that it is unwise to confuse the two. I found no reason to disagree with the honest woman. A close brush with critical injury and worse is accompanied by the quick flash before the mind's eye of past lives and the life that flashed before mine was of the French naval officer, captured and held by the British in a high tower isolated in a forest. That officer made his escape by shinnying down the downspout. Perhaps that's why I feel compelled to make my escapes down the water pipe when the situation calls for leaving without stopping to pack.
It's well-known that bumping elbows with disaster sharpens the senses to excruciating awareness of detail and so it was with me. When my hand grasped empty air and I felt myself falling back into the same, I became intensely aware of my surroundings. And when I had regained my balance and placed my foot back on solid ground, I gazed above me first at the lights ringing the top of the building, and then I scanned the branches of live oaks that shadowed me, feeling once more the cool breeze on my face. But it wasn't the same.
Something else I've read came to mind, something like, "this most excellent canopy, the air, this brave overhanging firmament, this majestical roof greeted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors." It wasn't just the near stinker from falling off the drainpipe. The film crew had finished long ago and the breeze from the fishing fleet downriver smelled of dead fish.
Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow. It will be different tomorrow.