Neon Black Passage

"I have a foreboding of... my children's or grandchildren's time... when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness..."   - Carl Sagan

                                                                                             
The world seems different once the sun goes down; More polar, more extreme. Laughter tends toward wild abandon, while tears are the children of abandonment. My forehead presses against the cool of the windowpane, as the bus rolls past steel towers, magnificent incandescent cages, and all the people trapped within; some relish it, others despise it.

Still others realize that life isn’t just about endless paperwork, furrowed brows, dripping sweat, pressures and responsibilities, thoughts like hammers, acknowledgements that feel like slaps in the face, praise that feels as cold as steel against your throat, and happy thoughts that seems to disappear upon the slightest focus. No, that’s just what’s on the surface. Life’s about what you cry out for at night; what provides you sustenance. Not food, mind you, but what keeps you going day after day, night after night, week after week, month after month, year after bloody year.  What fills you with an urge; determined, wistful, focused, yet happy, even if just for a while.

But life’s not just about happiness either, is it? It’s like with anything else; you can’t have one without the other. No rose without thorns, no love without pain, no life without death, and no success without failure. But that’s not quite it either. Weird thoughts, a feeling of discontent, felt by one boy in a crowded city, sitting on a crowded bus. It isn’t worth much, not in the grand scheme of things.

But shadows dancing on a window can’t outshine the glow in a lover’s eyes; the cold outside does not, cannot, diminish the warmth within, just as empty words can never fill the void left by those who enter the sanctum of your mind and treasure the diamonds within, no matter how coated with grime and grievance they may be.

I’m home now, staring out the window. Images upon images merge into each other, a long, dreary mess that serves no purpose, but somehow seems necessary right now. Friends become acquaintances before dwindling into strangers; their footsteps upon the paths of my mind fade. Others become kin, pounding away at pointless inhibition, teasing open cracks in walls built high to hold back tears. It aches to know I must leave them.

Melancholy and peace sing a duet; lulled, reality replaces illusion, and I wake to a different world.