the golden light of night.

Earlier this evening, something set me off and I found myself wandering my neighborhood streets at 2am, looking for some sort of solace, some sort of peace. From all of the swirling thoughts in my head. I walked and I walked, starting off fast and angry, with large steps that echoed in the dark roads and conjured neighbors' garage lights to flicker on, nearly blinding me.

I kept walking and after a few blocks of taking a route that I have grown to know quite well this summer, I grew less angry and more thoughtful, and so I turned around. Heading home, or maybe just in the direction of it, in case. It was little bursts of anger (pun, maybe, for those of you who would know) after that, but no foot-stomping ones, and I was feeling less angry and disgusted with myself and the world and more in awe of the four or five bunnies I saw having their own nocturnal parties in the streets as this human intruder crept by- this human intruder that should really be cuddled in her warm bed.

I paced around a bit more, until I found myself on the edge of my street, where it crosses with a usually very busy street. With no cars and the sky pitch black and all of the signs still lit up (Tia's Nails, for example, was shining brightly at 1:20am) but no activity. Just me, pacing around poles and poking at a pot of overflowing flowers- lazy Susans, I think, and I was just in awe of this street corner, with so much light, so golden and bright, yet dark at the same time. No one there to appreciate it but me, the crazy summer insomniac with few safe days left, and the handful of cars that would drive by occasionally. But they weren't noticing the way the street lights morph the color of your skin into something close to beautiful, no. They were thinking of their tired, aching bones, or climbing into bed with their wives or husbands or the things they did that day or the things they'd do the next day, or anything. Anything but what I was thinking.

Which is how I feel a lot of the time. That I'm the only one thinking these crazy thoughts, these bizarre and yet so wonderful thoughts, full of imaginary places and imaginary people that are actually all too real. I think that I'm the only one thinking these things, when really I'm not. So many of us are the same, or at least the people I tend to associate myself with. We may be occupied with a lot of the same thoughts, but these thoughts are so very pure and so very secret to us that we dare not speak them, even if the person next to us may be thinking the very same thing. The more I see and the more I hear, the more I realize that when you strip away all of the layers, many of us are very similar. Which is very scary in a world of people who are trying to be their hardest to be their own person, unique individuals who are really all the same in the end.