I just stepped out on tne porch, to take it all in before I turn in for the night. The weather is unseasonably cool for this time of year, and there is a brisk wind. For once, nature is perfectly in tune with my physical state. The weather is so pleasant I could easily stretch out on the tiles and sleep soundly, naked, caressed by the wind like a sleepy lover, my skin disappearing as I melt into the night.

Above me, gray cumulus clouds scud across the sky, illuminated by a full moon. Their fantastic shapes, so easily visible during the day, do not go away just because its dark. They are there whether I see them or not, but in any case, they do not affect me, or at least, I don’t know they affect me. In the spaces between them I see the stars, or at least, the ones bright enough to be visible through the light pollution. I can see out into the universe, and I visualize the multiple layers of infinity above me, of stars, galaxies, stretching forever in space and time, constantly changing but forever eternal. I can also sense the feeling of my skin against my clothes, the lawn chair, and the wind in my hair. Deep inside my body, cells and organelles carry out the routine chores of my body chemistry. My brain synapses fire and I try to make sense of it all but my understanding is so limited, so imperfect. Perhaps it is pointless, certainly to the universe, if not to me.

Around me, the night, the sounds of insects, the beating of my own heart, the sound of the TV inside and the cars on Commercial Boulevard, all intertwined in a endless and eternal fugue I am priveliged to witness for just a few moments before my body dissolves into its component atoms. It is a fractal cosmos, from the tiny to the infinite, in space and time and perhaps an infinity of other dimensions as well. What does it mean? Does it mean anything at all? Or am I insufferably arrogant for even entertaining the presumption to ask such a question? No matter, it doesn’t care. It doesn’t know I’m here even if I am aware of my surroundings. It just is.

It is there, it is all-encompassing, yet totally indifferent and unaware. But I am a part of it. A tiny spark of consciousness in an ocean of waves and fields and endless connections and relationships. Like a piece of wood that shows different grain depending on the angle you saw into it. All different, yet part of the same hidden pattern inside. I belong here, I have every right to be here, I have my allotted time to see a little piece and wonder briefly before I too experience oblivion. For a moment, it almost all makes sense, it is just beyond my grasp, I can almost touch it; and then its gone.