The pitch-dark sky is varnished with a few speckle of stars that only appear on days after rainstorm. The stone ground is still damp from the early evening shower. I came upon a path covered with fallen foliage, and as I waded the leafy avenue, the smashing sound of crisp dry leaf broke the silence of the night and accompanied my solo walk to the desolate campus parking lot.

The most reassuring sound after walking alone in a cold night is turning on the car engine. Slowly warm air murmured and sifted around the interior; slowly I acclimatized to the artificial warmth, forgetting it is 45°F out in the dark. The monotonousness of the late evening drive soon overtook my conscientiousness, in which scene by scene the day's happening replayed in my head like a film wheel, vivid but glossed over with the drone of time. Trifles, mild surprise and introverted anger all mixed indiscriminately together.

"Time weighs down on you like an old dream."

Was it Murakami who wrote this? Or was it Eliot? Dostoevsky? I cannot recall. Out of nowhere the aphorism is etched in my mind at such a timely moment. March is here.

Tags: Trifle