I couldn't take my eyes off of the ring of light that surrounded your head, where the overflowing light from the approaching cars poured over and through your translucent stray strands of hair to flood my eyes. It was the first truly cold night of Autumn, and it was already getting to the end of November. The air was thick with moisture, and all the passing streetlights diffused into the sky to make the darkened horizon glow with artificial light. I rested my head on the cold glass, and felt the vibrating roar of the hungry tide just outside. I closed my eyes and was greeted by that familiar burnt green lightning on black velvet. Bright images fading from the retina.
I was lost inside myself again. But this time the poles were reversed. It was only an hour ago when my body had buckled yet again under the evergrowing weight of my own hopelessness, a now natural and regular interval in thought. But after this low was an incredible peak, an almost instantaneous reversal of such rareity that I was taken aback. I was lost in reverence for everything around me; there was complete admiration in me for the passing cities, darkened and asleep under the cold drizzle of the November night. Shimmering shavings of beautiful noise surged all round my head. This vessel was drifting in an endless lightstream, homebound.
I realized how badly I wanted to achieve permanent reverence, or what the ancient Greeks called ataraxia: complete tranquility, ease of mind, and unfailing happiness. Philosophers like Aristotle believed ataraxia to be the highest good, the peak of individual achievement. This is the highest natural high possible, as pleasurable as a chemical high, but lasting for the rest of your life. Maybe that is perfection, and maybe that is an impossibility. This could be so, but at least there will be those highest peaks, however rare they actualize, to enjoy and to savor, and to re-energize and relieve, until that next drop into the darkest depths.
Perhaps an abstract form of loneliness, be it as it will.
