La vie sans lumière

That's how I feel like I'm living right now - not in darkness, just without light. You know that time of the evening just after dusk where the cities still glow in the distance and the street lamps are still orange but you need a light with which to read.

I'm in one of those towns, watching a city breathe. In the morning the motorway hums in the distance above the waking of the birds, at lunchtime the roads are jammed with commuters trying to make the most of a 40min lunch. And in the evening, the motorway starts to slur and as the sky turns to marl the lights flare up, a twinkling array of orange and yellow which seem to make you squint with the achingness of it all.

It's like a life lived from a distance, always cautious and curteous - avoiding confrontation or anger. Occaisionally depression sets in but you don't complain because what good would it do? Time after time terrible things seem to happen to you but because of your thoughts you don't wallow in it, you move on and accept that you can't have deserved the goodness anyway.

And the lights, when you see the lights you long to be there with all the 'other' people who get promotions and friends...you ache to be right there in their false embrace, surrounded by their wealth and seeming longevity.

But then your light comes on...throws attention to the half-finished decorating, the floor you mean to replace. The pets who aren't well trained, the food which is from a discount range. These things are real and they might not be illuminated, they might sometimes be lonely but they are never false. The sound of your little flat may be drowned by upstairs and next door, the light from it may not even reach your garden...but it's heard, by the people who are worth having...by the people who walk away, sometimes, from the city - to be a part of the world.

What I mean is that life may be a little dark in comparison, but light it shines goes much farther than the horizon.