No Haven

I was in Carman Hall they had told me. Carman Hall sounded like the Hall that would be the man who would make me twirl around his finger on this sultry, thrumming New York evening. Carman was what it ought to have been- white walls, clean bathrooms and well- polished furniture; like it had known if it had door handles, cornices and chandeliers or any personality whatsoever it would take away from its role of being a halfway house between the city and Columbia. As I looked outside the dormitory I was assigned I saw a couple gazing at each other smilingly sitting on a ledge outside the creamy bricked building alight with street lamps and crown-shaped vintage fixtures at the entrance as cars flitted past on the streets below and I felt a sense of freedom and power. Making my way through the clinks and thuds of doors, elevators and footsteps under the white ceiling lights. I looked towards the campus quad specked with light from neatly placed lamps and the imposing dome and porticos of the Low Memorial Library looking on smartly like it had habituated itself to the coming and going of the tidings of the city into academic pensiveness. The Butler Library, which imploded with light, lastly and loyally told me of the opulence of my situation. Walking through the College Walk with its bustle of people I seemed to want to hold on to this renewed anticipation I felt to be back here, forever. The buildings closed in on me as I walked along Amsterdam Avenue, they always did, formidably but equally, they knew of every souls debauchery. Then there were the cars; rubbing shoulders with the conscience, you were never lonely, someone looked out or over the glass windows, they reflected on your ruminations. The people, the clothes, the joints, the phones, the shoes, the stocks everything moved, everybody was doing something for each other, for the energy, for their rents, for looking better, for feeling better, and they knowingly, unknowingly but palpably became the center of the universe.