I sat out on the porch just now and I could see my breath in plumes around my face, despite the little amber glow between my fingers.
I pressed my back against the rough brick, and I could feel the cold of it seeping through my clothes and into my skin. I closed my eyes and sighed deeply, taking in the cold dark air and feeling it invigorating my tired body.
Not a single thing in my line of vision was moving. Nothing at all. In fact, I could’ve been staring into a panoramic photograph of the lamp-lit street and I’d have never known. The only thing to be heard, was the slow, meticulous flickers of sound as invisible rain trickled across the world, bouncing off the leaves in the trees.
I looked into the night, the rain, and the lamplit street and thought about nature and the darkness.
I looked at the houses, some still with dim yellowy lights in the windows, but most of them dark. In those houses lay people. People with such terrible secrets. Terrible sorrows that I couldn’t even begin to imagine. These people had incredible stories. Each sleeping soul inside each little dormant house had lived through such momentous and individual experiences, done things, said things, created things, and all so completely and irrevocably unique to themselves. These people fought and laughed, danced and cried through their days. They were in horrible and magnificent circumstances, foolish, brave and desperate situations.
But this didn’t matter to the rain. None of this is taken into consideration by the darkness.
While all these souls put their lives on pause in this state of perfect slumber, nature would not pause too. This dark, cold and perfectly still street could be from any time, any place, any scenario. The rain still falls on the battlefields in great world wars. The darkness still comes to abandoned towns. Rain fell in the 16th century, and darkness would continue to come by the 60th century. It could be times of great prosperity, bustling cities, plague-ridden societies, apocalyptic conditions, times of public outcry, the extinction of all earthly life or world peace. The rain and the darkness would continue to come, forever.
I wasn't even sure myself where I was going with these thoughts, I just felt suddenly so... aware. Do you ever get those moments of such unexpected clarity, where you feel you can truly see the state of reality, and the ways of the universe? Sometimes, when I am all alone in the dark, these thoughts creep up on me and tightly grip my mind, and I can't get free. I get it when I think to hard about the universe, or look at pictures of the galaxies, or read too much about history. I get caught in this thought-plague about the significance of life and the power of one, and it almost feels like a curse pressing down on my soul and I can't seem to just stop thinking.
Then I just pictured the exact same spot where I was sat, in one thousand years, the planet probably devoid of all life, and everything organic extinct. When everything and everyone is gone, the sky would give a grumble, and onto the infertile rocks of a once-world, millions of little rain drops would begin to fall, for no-one to see, no-one to hear, and nothing for it to affect. Then the darkness would come, and the daylight would follow, and the cycle will continue on for eternity, its sole purpose because it just does, and for that, I'll never know why.
