My roommate is playing an album by some group called Houses. I’ve never heard of them before,
but I like their music. It fits my mood tonight. There is a candle flickering
to my left, a candle that we are not supposed to have in the apartment because
it is a fire hazard. Which reminds me, I should put the battery back in our
fire alarm; I accidentally set off the alarm with a hot shower the other day
and I panicked because I thought someone would come in while I was still in my
bath towel so I climbed onto the bureau, reached up, and yanked the battery
out.
I admire this little candle – how it burns and burns with
all its unfaltering might, all the while shrinking beneath its flame, drowning
in its own melted wax. I wonder how it feels to be the cause of your own
destruction, to consume your very self.
I wonder if, in some subtle way, I am not unlike the sad
candle which burns itself away in my modest apartment. I am still young, I
know, but what if these years melt away before I have done all that I have set
out to do? I would like to go to Paris and watch the city’s reflection float
across the surface of the river Seine. I want to truly understand why F = ma, and I want to study the
philosophy of science, how Ptolemy’s ideas evolved into those of Copernicus,
and Kepler, and if Newton really sat under an apple tree when he came up with
the theory of gravity. I want to write my own song, I want to learn guitar, and
I want perform Clair de Lune flawlessly. I want to go to Mauna Kea in Hawaii
and look at the stars; I want to see an aurora in real life. I want to love
someone, and be loved. I want to open a coffee shop, or a bakery, with a
fireplace and classy art on the walls and antique poetry books on almost-dusty
shelves. I want to go on a road trip without even bothering to check if I have enough
gas in the tank, and I want to go hiking and canoeing and whale watching in
Maine and ride with sled dogs in Alaska. I want to live in New York City, and
live in California, and I want to ride a horse without the saddle and go so
fast that I almost fall off. I want to fly into outer space.
There is a bowl of leftover pasta in the fridge, except I
doubt I’ll ever eat it because I couldn't find any plastic wrap so I will
probably get hungry in a few hours, look at the uncovered pasta in the fridge
dubiously, and throw it away. I hope I don’t get blown out before my passion is
done burning, although I do like the smell right after you put a candle out. It’s
like burned roses, rusty fragrance. I’m going to blow the candle out now and go
to sleep.