death of the bogeyman

During my second ride in a taxi since my arrival in Boston, I stopped worrying over the meter, trying, as I usually do, to figure out preemptively the tip percentage so that I do not have to stay in the car a second longer than I have to, and instead threw myself against the seat, leaned back my head, and looked out the window for the short ride from the Harvard Square T stop to the Holden Green housing complex. This ride takes me past my most well-worn paths through campus, and as I sat blankly looking out at all that red brick bathed in a grey light that always portends snow but often does not deliver anything more than cold air, I thought to myself, "This? This is the place that caused me such agony for nearly four years? This?" It somehow seemed impossible that so much villainy and heartache could be contained in a place that now struck me as so benign and so downright small. A cocktail of relief and annoyance set in as I realized I no longer had an adversary I had come to count on, one that, as it turns out, I had pegged all wrong all along. Here was no malevolent wave to be met with fists and shouts and rage but a modest pile, provisional, utilitarian. The worst charge I could level against it now was that it is, if anything, strictly functional, without a sensual bone in its body.