Eternity is a very long time. Tonight I am sitting on a curb, watching yellow leaves fall gently from a tree, watching whispy clouds streak across the sky, watching cars and bikes and people go by. It was a long day, the unceasing quest of those unyielding obligations which call upon me as their master, although I'm never certain exactly why. It is Thursday though, which means tomorrow I have nothing to do. Tonight is means for celebration. Celebration, of course meaning dinner, sitting on a curb, alone. Watching the world go by. I'm thinking about Chris, a regular at the brewery I recently quit. Weekend nights, Chris would arrive on a little motorbike. He'd stop in for a pint that always seemed to be free, eventually step outside to smoke, and make conversation with coworkers all the while. Then he'd do it again the next weekend. And the next. He told me once, the day before I left that job, that he worked in IT half of the time and fixed wheels the other half. He always wore sunglasses inside and was surprisingly enthusiastic for his somewhat gloomy appearance. Tonight I am thinking about the pillars of creation, and how little Chris has to do with it. Swirling columns of gas and dust, far above or below me. Infinitely proceeding planets, infinite molecules and particles, drifting forever into deep space. It makes Chris seems not so significant. He just happens to be an infinitely small number of those particles put together just so. If anywhere else those same number of particles were obliterated from existence, it wouldn't matter. Would it matter if his particles disappeared? Would it matter if mine? Tonight I am thinking about uselessness. In a thousand years, an inconsequential amount of time in it all, Chris and I will be forgotten. Our names, our deeds, our lives will be grains in the sands of time. They always have been. To burn through a fixed rope. Tonight I am watching a plane draw a line across the sky. Tomorrow, I promise, will be better than today.
Ascetic.