The little click broke the placid monotony of the night's silence, and a tiny fire came forth flickering, her flames swaying and dancing to elude my damp breeze, while etching around it a canvas of colour against the background of moonlit silhouettes. Seated on my haunches, my back against the brick wall, I turned skywards at the vast emptiness that stretched above me, in search of drops of brightness against the backdrop a dying blue, while I fished through my pocket. There was economy in the sky, with barely a fistful of stars displaying their existence. Still fumbling through my pocket, I found my precious. I extracted the little roll of paper, and placing it between my clenched teeth, bent forward to dip it in the orange ballerina, watching her sway to avoid me, to refuse me. Hard to get, that's how I loved it. The trifle lasted a few seconds before we made contact; the tip charred, a lovely amber forming as I dragged. I felt the smoke caress my throat, my eyes shut involuntarily and my body go numb with that ecstasy indescribable. It took a few seconds to let go and my fingers removed the precious from my body, while I leaned back and exhaled like a man without a care in this world. Well, almost none. A deep weight burdened my chest, one I must carry to my grave. Literally. A tumor in my lungs, to be precise, probably the reason for my quietus.
Why do I still smoke, you ask? Why do we assume, that the cold and rational life of the proudly bleak is the only true journey? Why do we believe the path of the obsessively compassionate who have wronged to be any less? Ah..... I wish I could say this honestly, but it is far from true. Mea culpa.  In this harrowing journey that is fast approaching conclusion, I need some manner of pleasure, and none other known to me was commensurate. I was also told that it would hasten this process, a coup de grâce of sorts......My pleasure, my euthanasia, my precious.
*cough*
Turning back to the stars to relieve the burning in my chest, I stared long and hard at those little balls of fire in the distance. My intuition had always led me to believe that these celestial lamps were little more than they seemed to be. Truth was, they were not. The more I learnt about this universe, the further it deviated from the path of intuition. She was supposed to be infinite and yet growing, immutably impermanent. Immutable impermanence, or any other oxymoron by which it is known, is the one characteristic property of hers. When I asked what existed outside the universe, to picture her continual expansion in my mind, I was told there was nothing. Nothing. Not vacuum, nothing. The concept of something sans boundaries is baffling, but even more is the idea of this object expanding.
The mere enormity of these musings makes space the most potent reminder of our unimportance, a blatant message conveying the extent of our cosmic insignificance in the midst of this magic that surrounded us, this magic we call our universe. Billion year old bags of seawater, and yet with ego. Who do we live for, when we go back home to the sea, land and air? Do we not know our petty selves will never matter? The universe in all its indifferent randomness could not care any less about any being’s delight or woe, and there is no all-pervasive Grace. Perhaps that sounds desolate, but there is no reason whatsoever anything should get 'better' if better is objective at all. The universe is not sewn on the threads of good and bad, and does not dance to the leitmotif of reason. There is no heaven or hell, literal or poetic, no angelic benevolence or devilish malevolence. There is just being. And to this being, the universe is merely a silent spectator, whose purpose is in no way altered by the being itself; if such a grand purpose does even exist.
I yawned, and took another drag, and all my problems melted away, again, albeit for a few seconds. Nature has this way with us, this way of leading us through flights of euphoria with no effort whatsoever.
I realised, then, that in spite of the indifferent attitude of the universe, its entire magical repertoire would be entirely wasted without us. There, seated on my terrace, I felt like a significant being. You see, all the brilliance of the universe would be lost in time without conscious organisms, and their consciousness of consciousness; if the concept of time even existed without humans. Time after all, is little more than the a way to describe chronology, spacing between events, one of our many convenances.
At that moment, the people below began yelling. Life goes on. For all these people, for whom life rests on its everyday grease, for whom the frivolity of wealth and temporal fame in the face of a Cosmic Nothing really matter. It just grieved me, the manner in which they were consumed with the petty matters of consequence that are of consequence because they believe it to be. With the curtains of life too far beyond the horizon to be visible, they spent their time engrossed in matters of triviality, and none but mere survival mattered anymore. What of happiness, joy? It is unfortunate, how none of us can ever experience another person’s consciousness. All of us, in our societies, our civilizations, all with the subliminal belief that consciousness is invariant, when this is as far from truth as possible. You see, all they would need is a couple of hours spent with the belief that they too were fast approaching their deaths, their final re-unification with sea, land and air; and they too would value what little they had through new eyes.
I took another drag, waiting for the city lights to go out, for the world to fall asleep and for darkness to consume all. As the euphoria gradually melted away, I realised that it was not just the happiness that I would miss. It wasn't just the joy, it wasn't just about ecstasy and exaltation. It was every single inch of being alive. I would miss the pain of failure, the frustration of matters trivial, the heartache of betrayal, all of it. Who said life was too short for us to waste time being sad? The primal satisfaction, the raw brilliance of feeling was worth it. I felt disappointed, desolated and tried to soak in it, drown in the feeling.
I felt dizzy, like I would pass out; so intense was the feeling. My chest hurt, the palms of my hand began to sweat; I felt the end near, like a man standing on the cliff of a mountain, the one place from which he could see all the beauty, and yet never touch it again; while the inertia took him over.