dazzling

The sun came out for the first time in what feels like months today, but sunshine comes and goes--there are entire weeks when I couldn't tell you what the weather was like because I've got better things to do than look at the sky. But tonight--tonight I walked out under the clear sky and the all the lights dazzled my eyes, and I walked the city sidewalks like a dream.

I'd spent the past months living in a world that was in sharp focus, the diluted daylight of a cloudy day making it all perfectly clear. By sunlight this afternoon I was starting to see things coming undone--some shots and scenes too sharp, too brilliant, too eye-catching, to be actually real. But that's what bright spring days always feel like, isn't it? There's a chill in the air and it's like a veil has been lifted.

I never thought anything of it before tonight, because tonight is when I realized that a veil had been lifted. As the lights blinded me with their brilliance and the city floated past me, I realized that the clouds had been concealing the simple fact that the world I knew, the focused world, the understandable world, didn't exist. These strange brilliant overwhelming lights and the strange formlessness, the fickle light of the moon, these are what's real. There are no edges, only blurs.

So tonight I bought a bottle of coffee liqueur and sat on my porch, drinking and laughing as the city lights finally overwhelmed me.