A Beautiful Night



Yesterday was hectic and tiring. Work wasn’t stressful but I had some things on my mind, which means I stressed my self out about nothing. Then the tiring journey back started and I was reading Perks of Being a Wallflower on the iPad while chatting with someone who people should pay me for being friends with. No, he’s not some difficult person you want to punch every time you see him. He’s an amazing person and we talk about the lamest things on Earth. Yesterday we were arguing about How I Met Your Mother and how it could be compared to the oh so sappy love stories by Nicholas Sparks. Needless to say, I won the challenge. Anyway, swiping through facebook and twitter and iBooks, I was slightly depressed. Rereading Perks, I was now at the last few pages. Where Charlie is depressed and it’s so difficult to read about another’s depression and not feel sad about it. Then I realized it’s been ages since I left work, it was dark out side and I look outside to realize we are still in Wellawatte!



So by the time we got to the New Galle Road, which meant the sea, the night sky and ten more minutes before I reach home, I was exhausted. My eyes were aching since I read for more than 1 hour, with terrible lighting, and I was ready for bed. I was also extremely hungry, and needed to answer a call of nature. I opened the van window just a bit because I love that salty smell of the sea and loved the feel of the wind on my face. It was just the sea and I and it was pretty amazing. The sea was dark and there were ships in the distance. But then I noticed the sky, and God! The sky was perfect. It really was. It was really dark and cloudless and there were so many stars everywhere. It was perfect.

And I hope you won’t judge my taste in music based on this but the song, “it’s a beautiful night, we are looking for something dumb to do, hey baby! I think I wanna marry you” started playing in my head. Because it was the kind of night to do dumb things. But while I kept ‘playing’ those four lines in my head, over and over again, I didn’t think of a certain someone. I didn’t think of just one person I would want to share the night with, to count the stars. There were many I wanted to share the night with; I wanted to share it with everyone I knew.

And that’s the beauty of such nights. You want it to be about everyone, not just one person. And in Perks, Charlie says, at one point, they all felt infinite. Such nights do make you feel infinite. So I enjoyed the night sky until the trees got in the way and the buildings got in the way and the clouds finally got in the way. Then I got home, and heard bad news after bad news. And I watched HIMYM S9E2 which made me sad again, and I made the HIMYM v Nicholas Sparks picture for the dumdum and finally my grandmother got back home and I had ice cream so I was happy. But I couldn’t stop thinking about those stars.



I sent the Bumbles a message not because I was sad, but because I hoped I could somehow share the night with them. All of us, in our different corners, going on with our lives, but the sky was beautiful that night, for all of us.

And today I heard a bit more bad news and my head aches a bit and my body too and I have so much of work, but yesterday’s sky just won’t leave my mind.

Which led me to realize something else or rather remember what I realized before. I was reading Perks and I can’t remember which paragraph it was, but it said something which made me realize something. You know how we always have these things we regret or wish we had never done? And it keeps bothering us because it proves we are useless or worthless or whatever? So there were a few for me, such moments, things I wish I never did. And those memories kept making me feel guilty. Then I read that paragraph and realized it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered because life was beautiful and didn’t deserve to go unnoticed. Why let memories haunt you when you can instead make new memories?

So that night, I went to bed tired and feeling a bit queasy. And I was worried and sad. But that sky! Ah! That was enough.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Availability, dating, love, etc.

There’s a line in Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends where, towards the very end of the book, one character says to another: “You know, I still have that impulse to be available to you.” This line struck me when I first read it, because it seemed to describe simply what love is: an impulse, a desire to always be available for a person. Now, when I first read the book, I hadn’t really dated, but later, when it happened, I saw how this simple need to always be available to someone wasn’t love. Not necessarily. Not always. It was sometimes a sure-fire way of hating yourself and perhaps even hurting others. I don’t like dating; I’ve vowed to never date. And the reason is this sense of availability, this sense of giving it my all. I haven’t particularly liked any of the, let’s see, two people I can say I dated, even though it’s a stretch, really. But in both instances, there was no real attraction to the person. They were available and bored. I was available and bored. Quite roma
Read more

Alone time

Image
Nation Free editorial Alone time is a few minutes or even hours all for yourself. It can be spent at home, at a bookstore or library or even in an unknown city. There are no rules or regulations or rituals regarding alone time. Sometimes you just feel you need to be alone and you find a place you feel the most isolated from others. A need for some alone time arises in most of us. It starts like a mild breeze on a hot day and can end like a tidal wave that hits you with great force. This need, when not addressed, could turn into anxiety or depression. Pic by Sakuna Gamage However, many assume needing alone time is a sign of mental weakness; that it is only the troubled who need time away from other people, or in most cases, those familiar faces. This is far from the truth. We can’t continue to spend night and day with the same people and at some point or the other, we need to get out. If you feel like a trapped animal in your own home or school or workplace, plan a vacation wh
Read more

Learning to Let Go

Kumara is only a name in my memories. I think he was dark, and not that tall. I think he wore shorts, but I can’t be sure. What I do remember about him is related to bikes. Since my brother was the leader of the pack, even though the pack had three girls and only one boy, we were mostly tomboys. We never had Barbies and tea sets to play with. Among our various treasures were our bikes. Since the pack of cousins was nearly all the same age, we went through the same phases together. The most excited phase for me was the bike phase. Each of us had a cycle and we loved racing each other around the heart shaped lawn in my uncle’s garden. We never spent too much time with the training wheels, and had our knees scraped too many times. I still remember the time I fell off, my bike landing on me. The sun was setting, and my body was covered in sweat. I knew my knee was bleeding and dreaded the moment the adults would clean the wound. When my uncle and aunt rushed to me, I told
Read more