Usually late night like these...

most especially in Diamond Bar, California - I look outside my window and start to worry as I can see the sun rise beyond the horizon and over the hills.

But then I check the time, and realize that it's just light pollution.

Reminds me of the camping trips I always take several times a year. It's weird, but one of the reasons I don't like camping is because it reminds me of my own mortality. I blame it on the night sky; being able to see all those stars, staring into the infinite. Subconsciously I feel how small I am against the vast measureless darkness that we call the universe, and how my existence doesn't really mean much in the indefinitely broad measure of things. And then I start to feel a need for the city life again; man-made walls surround me, protect me from this constant reminder of the nihilism rooted deep within my mind.

I take comfort in hearing the freeway outside of my bedroom window at home. It's not right outside of my window; it's at a distance - a mile or two - far away enough for it to be soft white noise but close enough for me to know that there are people riding man-made, 12 tons of raw power out there on the road. Even at night. I grew up with that sound, slept to it, lived with it. I guess I take comfort in the inventions and constructions of the human mind - although, not so much the creator of all these artificial creations.

But by all means, that doesn't mean I don't enjoy camping with friends. I just enjoy the city more. I'm a city boy, and I grew up that way. I like my concrete walls, and I like to decorate them with artistic, creative practices and cultures of all sorts - both inventions of the human mind. It keeps my mind busy and helps me forget that I am really just one person amongst the canvas of trillions of lifeforms on this planet - and quite possibly, one against the trillion trillion trillion in this universe - struggling for survival. I am one being against the billions of humans on this planet trying to find meaning. God, that's so fucking scary.

I write this after a late night spent at another midnight screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. My thoughts came to a nihilistic approach as I rode home from the theater in Claremont, looking outside towards the artificial night sky done by light pollution. My thoughts - they traveled to the many camping trips I've been too, and the many nights where I've just lied there in my sleeping bag or my air bed - and look up towards the fabric ceiling of my tint and think to myself, "There's a thin layer of fabric between me and the infinite that is the sky, space, the universe - staring right back at me."

And then I fall asleep letting that thought haunt me for the rest of the night. And hell, my life even. I've just never really communicated these thoughts to anybody because well... fuck, it's quite a buzzkill for a thrill-seeker like me. But it haunts me still, to this day...