What We Need

There's something unholy about street lights at midnight. Something profane about an artificial construct that at once overwhelms nature and accentuates our fears of uncertainty and each other. Perhaps they really are just necessary evils, like war, hate, and heartbreak. Evils that help us to “appreciate” those increasingly few times when we find ourselves peaceful, loved, and worry-free. Perhaps. But I can't seem to shake the feeling that there must be something wrong about a “good” that necessitates so much of its antithesis, as if the human experience could be boiled down to the legalities of Newton.

I walk outside, alone with these halfhearted glows, ruddily illuminating our earth as if to say “don't worry, there's no mystery here.” As if mystery, as if wonder were blots upon the mind. As if the stars and moon could never hope to provide what people need to feel at home. As if home was anything but a state of mind.

And yes, I know. The lights are meant to reveal our selves to speedy cars and would-be-rapists, because no one can get hurt in plain sight. People don't die when so brilliantly illuminated by man-made-light-of-day. No, only in dark rooms, in dark continents with dark people, in dark minds at dark places do terror and pain really exist. My night light keeps me safe, because I can see the world around me. I can see everything but the dark.

I hear a distant train whistle blow, and I wryly think that I ought to feel comfort in the knowledge that the wheels of industry never sleep. The train's passing becomes a white noise my ears are all too glad to hear. No more do I have to listen to the night or endure that godforsaken silence! How you can grow to fear such a thing... Like a lull in conversation with someone you so desperately wanted to meet, to speak to but never had the chance until just right now only to find that after you've exchanged banalities your mind blanks and there's only that void of the verbal, that hole that can't be filled no matter how your mindbodysoul screams because it has so much to say so much to mean and yet, as you sink towards silence, as you plummet into the oblivion of a failed attempt at understanding, both of you notice and both of you think you've failed and can't not never speak connect or mean a damn thing again to each other and it's either speak without substance or subsist on nothing so you talktalktalktalktalk or God Forbid you never say as much or mean just what you meant. But the train fills that silence, between you and nature. Between you and yourself. The wheels turn, the coal burns, and you can rest because there's nothing left to listen.

I invade circle after circle of alien light, staking its claim upon my piece of mind, and dare to look up long enough to see another soul walking so late at night, alone, like me. I dare to think that I should wave or smile or act as if the other person even existed, but, fortunately for all parties involved, my senses ever-so-swiftly reassert themselves. My fear of the Other, their fear of me, the uncertainty of this halfhearted darkness in this lukewarm gloom keep me to myself, and so I walk on by without so much as “Hi.” Without so much as a smile they can only hear as you say “No need to be afraid.” Without so much as “Wouldn't it be nice if stars were all we needed?”