Sunday, January 13, 2008
| A Darkness Filled With Order and Light Current mood: complacent Category: LifeThe city stretches out before me like a glittering grid in the dark of a Saturday night. I always think it looks so much more organized after dark, with rows of little blinking lights demarking blocks, roadways and the cars that traverse them. I step closer to the window that forms one whole wall of the unlit little break room, and rest my forehead on the glass, my breath turning it opaque as I sigh. I’m filled with an odd mixture of complacency, resignedness and wistful longing as I look out over my domain – freeways, residential neighborhoods and the glimmering grid to my left and silent dark towers of commerce in front and to my right. The skyscrapers are mostly dark at this time on a weekend, but here and there I can see portals of light shining weakly. I wonder if there are any other people toiling away late into the night, as I am. I stare harder and crane my neck to see if, in one of the nearby buildings, someone else might be doing the same. If there’s anyone out there, I don’t see them. I’m alone up here, on the 28th floor. The Ferris wheel, gaudily lit in blue neon has long stopped spinning; its patrons have long since fled for home and sleep. The streets directly below me are curiously free of cars. I feel isolated up here in my tower, yet curiously at one with the whole city glittering around me. I’m in the heart of it all – a heart which pulses slowly in a body quietly at rest. I stand a solitary sentinel for a few moments more, then turn and close the door on the night full of lights and empty of sound. |
