Nights Like Tonight

Nights like tonight make me miss smoking. And not necessarily for the nicotine but for other elements of the experience.

Nights like tonight make me miss drinking. And not necessarily for the alcoholism as for other pieces of the experience.

These little things that may seem chaotic have their sense of peace. Life is tangentle like that. So next, of course, comes the query: why do chaotic things resemble peace? Can peaceful things therefore also resemble chaos?

In my mind I'm smoking that cigarette. I'm outside looking up at a huge supermoon that I was too stubborn to look at the night before. I'm in a distant land in a beloved movie of my childhood watching fireworks more brilliant than I'd ever seen. I'm taking a deep drag of that mentholated bliss as the crisp night air sends chills down my arms. I'm closing my eyes and pretending you're there. I'm back laying on a cold piece of grass freezing with one blanket and laughter and that glimmer in your eye that pulls me in with such gravity that not even the blood moon could get my attention. I'm laying in bed looking up at a ceiling pretending it was a starry night and we're on that camping trip we talked about. I'm on the raft in the deep end with the big kids in the middle of that coal mine turned into a lake. I'm in a dry forest down the street from my childhood home where the Easter Bunny will have to rescue from a fire later.

In my mind I'm sitting outside on that patio with the vine treatise sipping a cold beer from a not quite stolen glass. I'm on a roof after a long day of hard work with a bottle feeling free as I never was. I'm sipping cheap beers and complaining that they're not craft beers. I'm sipping craft thinking about the cheap tallboys i used to drink at bars with only numbers, quaint white lights, and the occasional gypsy lumberjack. I'm at a party dodging the strays while I scan the room for my target. I'm the gal with the weird colored hair post high school holding a red cup at a kegger with a dip chewing jock that didn't have the guts to stand up to his friends and say "This is the girl I want to be with." I'm looking up from a tower of cans overlooking a Derby game as I'm being introduced to my friend's soon to be fiance. I'm taking a big chug as I see the ones they chose after me. I'm sitting at a bar after hours watching a space shuttle land.

All of those things give me both peace and chaos. Not all of them happened outside of a dream. But some of them did. Oh some of them did.

Nights like tonight make me miss coffee. And not necessarily for the caffeine but for the embodiment of it all.

Nights like tonight make me miss believing in a higher power. And not necessarily for the gesture but for the insanity of it all.

Nights like tonight make me thankful for the peace. Nights like tonight make me thankful for the chaos. For all of the experiences and light and levity of dreams and realities and dreams again.

Peace and chaos can exist at the same time. The uncertainty can be just as comforting. The mind can be ruptured and torn and whole at the same time.

Time is just a daydream. Everything is nothing. Memories are the only reality that exists and they don't even exist.

No matter what this is or isn't. No matter what's missed or not. No matter desire or wanting. No matter passion or passing.

This moment is a gift.

Own it. Enjoy it. Devour it. Love it. Fear it. Hate it. Forget it. Let it go. Do whatever you want with it.

This moment is a gift that doesn't belong to you but belongs to you.

This moment is a gift.

And now it's gone.

Do you still exist or are you gone as well? Chaos. 
Peace.
Peace. 
Chaos. 
Chaos.
Peace.
Peace.
Chaos.

And so on. And so on. 
And.
So.
On.
Out.

Circa 8.14.13