I have been, as the song goes, one poor correspondent and too too hard to find; but it doesn’t mean you ain’t been on my mind.
I wish you could walk with me in the mornings. I’d like to show you my Gainesville, tell you about the Gainesville that exists in my head. Have I ever told you I dream about this town? The town in my dreams is just a little bit different than Gainesville. The streets are a little bit longer… or shorter (or more curved, or have businesses instead of houses, or visa-versa), houses have moved around. In my dreams, and in my morning walks, my imagination whispers me stories, secrets about these streets. In my head, I hear the Cowboy Junkies – That house there is haunted, that door’s a portal to hell; this street holds its secrets very well.
Sometimes I just make up stories about the people who live in the houses I pass; ideas based on things they leave outside or bumper stickers on cars or things I hear through windows as I pass. But sometimes there’s a full-fledged fictional character that pops into my mind from the pages of my unwritten urban fantasies.
