lights out

I remember times when I was a little kid, sitting in the back seat of our old Camry as we drove up to my grandma's place late at night. It used to always be pitch black outside, and I could wave my hands in front of my eyes and not be able to see them. Sometimes my mum would be playing old Bee Gees songs on a cassette. The tinny sounds seemed out of this place and timeless. If it wasn't cloudy, I could look up at the sky and see stars that weren't tainted by the city lights. Millions and millions of them, pulling my little kid's mind into wrong directions. It was all real and in front of me. I'd panic, and feel a fear so deep that it shook everything up and made the world seem jilted and wrong. I could feel what it meant to die; deep, dark and empty, forever and ever. There was something huge and bizarre that we were all blind to because we were all just a part of it.

Most of the time I get so caught up in myself that I forget it all. I weave myself a cocoon of tastes, friends, stories, hobbies, beliefs... internally consistent, beautiful... and delicate. Sometimes it all gets torn up and broken and I tearfully scramble to make it whole again, even though it's futile and the things that it weaved itself from are lost forever. But sometimes, rarely, I see it for what it is, and none of it matters any more. It'll change, and it'll get torn up and broken. None of it is fixed or permanent, and I know that fussing over it will just keep me distracted.