Place At Night


The red flower hidden in a field of green sat by noiselessly as I walked towards the abandoned church. I noticed the flower because I noticed that I had never noticed it before. It was rather insignificant, no more special than any other flowers that I've seen; I'd only stopped to notice because I had never seen it before.

My eyes were adjusted to what I knew. Green grass. Gray walls. And cobwebs on the ceiling. The rest of the world fell back to a hazy shade of background noise. My world consisted of me and maybe my favorite book. Even the sun had to make special sacrifices to make me acknowledge its presence. The rain itself had to summon a monsoon before I changed any plans for it.

Only the moon has caused me to halt. Only the moon has caused me pain. I never go out at night because I know if I see it I am as good as gone. There's no place for me at night. Not with that blasted thing in the sky.

And I can never see in the night because moonlight blinds me and the stars are just holes for someone else to look into me.

I can imagine them looking inside, wondering at the fascinating thing growing and moving in the black punch bowl. And I can imagine someone, noticing, one day... at this gray-green little thing, walking around this earth and its seas. And I can imagine them noticing me, and saying to themselves..."it was rather insignificant, no more special than any of the rest...I'd only stopped to notice it because I'd never seen one before..."

Nothing changes. Not in this world, not in the one beyond this one. The same rules. Because people are made of the same things. And all the vanity and pretension of our lives are never washed away. We live in a world of lies. Because we believe we are greater than anything else on earth. And we only pretend to care about the everything and everyone else because it suits us to do so. Everything and everyone, only the audience looking to us for our performance.

We act as though there are bigger audience, hidden, invisible to our eyes, but felt with our extra senses. This we feel, but we misunderstand. Because those eyes watching us are no better than our own. They play their own games, and look down at us for our follies, while they busily create their own.

We live in a universe of madness. There are no sane voices. Only tired ones who cannot act anymore.

But life is but an act. We judge ourselves at our performances in the end, but always in context of the act.

We never believe we are real. We can't. We don't know what that is.

Only when you see the world through a child's eyes can you possibly know anything.

And by then, you've grown tired of this world, and happily moved into your own. You've saved yourself, because there are no more acts left to perform. The rest of us become like aliens to you, strange and disturbing folk.

And maybe we are. We don't belong on this world. We only pretend that we do. Because we know we are made for a bigger stage. Always a bigger stage. And never satisfied with what we have.

I only notice this because a red rose choose to make itself apparent to me and my green-glazed eyes. Momentarily disoriented, at the unexpected in a field of common grass. But only for a moment, and only for a day. It wasn't significant... it only mattered because I had never seen it before.

And by then, you've already forgotten it and moved on.

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