Friday is standing room only on westbound Blue43. Spill out in Northampton and the row houses on Graves speak of grey British Streets where the sun has finally set after a 4-century long sunny afternoon. I count the identical doors until I get to #17 - home of Rob, resident obscurantist. Inside, I am confronted by books - on shelves, in banker's boxes, stacked on tables, everywhere - thousands of books that comprise a vast & impressive Esoteric Studies library. Rob has had a great day, and he wastes no time in proudly pointing out a stack of some 30 newly acquired titles in his collection - all concerning the subject of Russian Orthodox Icons. One becomes disoriented by viewing his strange libros - Alchemy, Mysticsm, Byzantium, Sufism, Punks, Theories, Anti-Theories, monks with huge beards and wild-eyed expressions. His stash of LPs is of equal depth, and from the red persian rug in his music room, we listen to the Soft Machine and sip hot turkish coffee. Also on the rug is a large hookah filled with strawberry tobacco from Morocco and marijuana from Vermont. On top sits a glowing coal, providing the heat to produce the condensed smoke, sweet & smooth. We laugh at the irony in our indulgence of earthly stimulants amid a library of texts which reveal the attainmnent of mystic enlightenment & spiritual elevation through purity, chastity and disciplined self-deprivation. Rob assures me that the books on Shamanism & Dionysus & Aleister Crowley are kept in the livingroom.

The symbolism of the East continues with the night as I follow the 4-day old crescent moon down Main Street toward the bus stop, and then right past it. I keep walking - alongside bright shop windows - to pay phones which freeze my ear - past pretty girls who smile & ask for time - past pretty girls who look away & contemplate the moon - down alleyways & up hills & around dark corners - next to hurried traffic and through empty parking lot where solitary van is jump-started - I slip past all this and more on the chilly breeze. When the moon has set, I am in my own neighborhood. There is no sound but for the clip-clop of boot heels against frozen asphalt, then, the crunch of boot heels breaking the crusty snow, then, the creak of boot heels on wood of old porch.