Sometimes I look at text on a website, and it looks so much smaller than I remember it. Or sometimes I get into my car, and I feel bigger then I remember, like I can't fit as well in the driver's seat, or I feel smaller, where I'd have to stretch more to the pedals.
These are some of the things I think of at this time of night, when the air is cold no matter what season, and the roaring freeway has died to a whisper, and the tangible quality of loneliness starts to set in and affect your thoughts; that kind of loneliness that has nothing to do with alienation, but a more instinctual, direct loneliness. The literal sense of being alone, when everyone is sleeping. And why consider them gone when they are just sleeping? They are still there, are they not? But maybe they really are somewhere else, independent of their bodies, and you can sense that. Or maybe its all associations and silly feelings, and the idea is just an illusion.
All that is not the point.
There is a different thought process at this time of night. Sometimes melancholy sets in. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you play some smooth music. Sometimes you wonder if someone is being murdered anywhere nearby. With the fading of light comes the fading of the great roar. The great bustle. When you do see or hear people at this time of night, their existence becomes very interesting, because there is nothing else to be distracted by.
The cold, dull oscillating boom of a plane passing overhead stirs a contemplation of who is inside. And who is in that plane? At this time of night? What are they doing? Where are they going? The sound a plane makes in the dead silence reminds me how infinite that sky really is.
Who is driving this car passing by? Are they alone? Are they gazing out into the darkness beyond the headlights, wondering the same things as me as I lay just 50 yards from their passing vehicle behind a thin wall? Do they see the light in my room? Do they wonder who I am? What I am doing? Are they taking the time to wonder like the time I am taking right this moment? Do the directions of our inquiries meet at a precise moment? Only to cross over each other and sweep over something else? Is there someone lying in this person's trunk?
What are people doing on the other side of the world where it is light? Where the great roar is in full volume? The bustle in full activity?
Dark blues. Brown yellows. Purple streaks. Black. Those are the colors of the night. Those are the colors of my thoughts in this point in time.
