The Johnson Center (the common building on the George Mason Fairfax campus) is awake and it’s late.

A few hours ago I sat with my Spanish Grammar and Synxtax homework in the Jazzman’s cafe, the basement coffee cafe with high cielings and furniture too colorful to be comfortable. Out of class now, I’m in the JC Cinema waiting for Little Miss Sunshine to begin and for Cathrin to come join me.

They’re breaking just outside the cinema lobby windows. I counted b-boys until I realized they outnumbered the audience. The music and the almost anonymous camaraderie of that community are unique to those night hours when knees, palms and sneaker friction warm that clean hard floor to life. Almost any other time the space is near vacant, cold and lonely.

Tomorrow that space will spasm with energy when the public and the press (and me) stream in to see Obama.

Eyes too heavy,
screen too bright.
Time for bed–
tomorrow I’ll write.