August 23, 2010: Bruce Springsteen - Spirit in the Night

Bruce Springsteen - Spirit in the Night: youtube.com/watch?v=WvJ1A7EeJ7o&feature=related

I'm sure it was August. I was living in Halifax and had a car. Laura called me in the morning and wanted to go out, do something fun, wanted to drive to East Hastings where she grew up. I still see that whole day in some sort of soft light, like it never happened but was some dream that I can still recall.

As we drove Laura pointed out personal histories. There was the house where her best friend lived. That was where they used to go to drink on the weekends. That's a haunted house. That's where RJ lived when he first moved to Nova Scotia. That's where her and Jack got kicked out of a bar and drank in the parking lot. We talked about ghosts and witches. She brought me to her Mom's house where no one was home and I wandered through, looking at pictures of Laura when she was young, the room where she used to sleep. It was all so surreal, like we'd broken into a house where no one lived but pictures strewn along the walls.

We drove to the beach and laid down. I wanted to swim but had no shorts so Laura gave me an extra pair she'd brought, I barely fit in them tight. I swam out to a landmark in the clear water, some dock someone had built just inside the safety of the deepening shoreline. I've been terrified of swimming for years, mostly because of murky water and what waits beneath, but this water was clear and cool and the wind blew soft against my wet and chilled body. I sat looking out into the water there for some time alone, swam back to the shore.

And all day we'd been listening to Bruce Springsteen's Greetings from Ashbury Park. When "Spirit in the Night" came on we sang to it, listened to it over again all day in the car. We drove and Laura told stories all day, it wasn't yet nightfall when we drove back into the city. And that song held the day. It remains.