3AM Dreams of Faraway Lands in the West
Dark Necessities - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Lights dim.
The calves, the chicks, and the cubs are all fast asleep, as are their parents.
The only creature awake at this time is the miserable student, toiling toward dreams of a future in the city that builds the future. Dreams lit by the switch of a halogen bulb, burning itself out like the student inevitably will, a star burning bright in the sky, hanging on to the last threads of its ability.
Trapped on my little world within the darkness around me, I insert my blessed personal catharsis into my ear, and begin the flow of emotion into my mind.
Under the glaring star above my desk outshining the night sky, a neon dream takes ethereal shape.
A longing appears from the static within. Virulent, aggressive, as if to say "Leave this place. Go to your own heaven, for it lies in the West."
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The sun was setting.
A lone man races down a desert highway on his motorcycle, wind whipping through his hair, his black clothing in stark contrast to the cosmic painting of the grandiose sunset to the west and the slow arrival of the blanket of the night, creeping over the mist-covered mountains in the east as an exhausted child would over the sleeping body of his mother, looking for a nook in which to sink into a deep slumber.
Shrubbery and scenery rush past him, as ephemeral as the short glance between two people destined never to meet again, both paths diverging, the moment racing away as a memory of the image in his mind fades into the dead past.
Shrubbery and scenery rush past him, as ephemeral as the short glance between two people destined never to meet again, both paths diverging, the moment racing away as a memory of the image in his mind fades into the dead past.
Suddenly, a thought appears, like a single quantum particle leaping into existence. The rider brings his bike to a slow stop, and faces the mural of colors of the dying day leaping like flames in the west. The rider removes his jet-black helmet, revealing his face.
The rider was me.
I stood there for milliseconds that felt like centuries. Time slowed, as if I was moving at the speed of light. Faint tunes of a long-lost emotion from hundreds of miles away reverberate at the edges of my vision, a reminder that this reality is but a happy illusion, ready to be swept away at a single moment's bidding. The fiery orange of a dying sun illuminates half of an eternal sky, clinging on to the canvas of the heavens until the sun's speaks its last breath only to be reborn the next day, as it has done for eternity. The night grasps the bright tendrils of the sunset, only to bring the familiar darkness over the desert, sending the creatures of the day scurrying to their homes, and awakening the beast of the night.
For I know.
For I know that night will not come soon. For I know that this moment is forever stuck, and will never move until I bid it to.
A single set piece in my divine drama disobeys me.
A small car appears like a dot in the distance along the highway. For what lasts as long as a lifetime, but as short as a second, the dot blazes its trail between the mural to the west and the liquid darkness in the east.
Slowly, the car rolls to a stop, and a small family of three steps out.
A man and woman, both in their early thirties, with the youthful vigor of a child, but with the dignity of monarchs.
And finally, a child steps out.
With the gentleness of a breeze on a flower, his foot touches the ground with the graceful finality of the culmination and convergence of universes at that small, ephemeral moment in time.
The child looks to the west, eyes fixed on the infinitely vast horizon.
The child was me.
The sunset's fiery threads dying out at the end of the day were an image that would be stuck in my head for years to come.
The family loaded back onto the car.
And with an almost mundane finality, the car drove away.
I lingered there for eternal moments longer, then felt another impulse, as strong as before.
And then, as night crept up on me from the east, I got back onto my motorcycle, and blazed away along the line that the sunset makes with the darkness.
A single set piece in my divine drama disobeys me.
A small car appears like a dot in the distance along the highway. For what lasts as long as a lifetime, but as short as a second, the dot blazes its trail between the mural to the west and the liquid darkness in the east.
Slowly, the car rolls to a stop, and a small family of three steps out.
A man and woman, both in their early thirties, with the youthful vigor of a child, but with the dignity of monarchs.
And finally, a child steps out.
With the gentleness of a breeze on a flower, his foot touches the ground with the graceful finality of the culmination and convergence of universes at that small, ephemeral moment in time.
The child looks to the west, eyes fixed on the infinitely vast horizon.
The child was me.
The sunset's fiery threads dying out at the end of the day were an image that would be stuck in my head for years to come.
The family loaded back onto the car.
And with an almost mundane finality, the car drove away.
I lingered there for eternal moments longer, then felt another impulse, as strong as before.
And then, as night crept up on me from the east, I got back onto my motorcycle, and blazed away along the line that the sunset makes with the darkness.
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