Lua

Now I know the posts at/about the ranch may have been overdone a little bit. So that's why I laid low for a while and now that that whole escapade has blown over, I want to write about a magnificent experience I had one night at the ranch.

The last week I was working was long, arduous and just plain boring. I wanted to be home so badly. As this experience happened earlier in the week (probably on a Monday or Tuesday) it made me appreciate the fact that I was out, away from the majority of the human existence, on a little getaway in the country alone with my own thoughts and my best friend, Chris.

I was up late, which doesn't happen often. I had to make breakfast in the morning, so I mixed and patted the dough for the british scones and chucked it in the freezer, frustrated with myself that I was up til 11:30. I stepped outside with nothing but the filthy clothes hanging from my exhausted, bony frame and an iPod with some shitty speakers complete with batteries, fit to die. Staring up at the sky that late at night in Vernon is something glorious. You're at least 40 miles from anywhere with an abundance of electricity and loud, wired people and the sky reflects that. There's no light pollution, nothing to mar the beauty of a simple night sky. You look up and you see a network of light working above you, you see the entire milky way, you see everything your deity wants you to see.

I collapsed on the grass just 20 feet from the house, next to a water pump. Now there are many reasons for me to turn on music that is the epitome of sorrow, and the reasons for that night are the ones that plague me often: I was sick of the tedium of our 8 hour work days, I was sick of the other boys and their infatuations with video games, I was tired all the time, I was hungry all the time and I missed Mary more terribly than ever before. So I turned to the wondrous chunk of metal resting sweetly in the grass next to my head and turned on a song from a "famous singer" I loved: Bright Eyes' "Lua."

Is it foolish to play music that will only make you slip deeper into a state of loneliness?
Not at all.
That's what I do. That's what everyone should do.

"When everything is lonely I can be my own best friend."

I watched the stars and listened. And I not only listened to the words of a sage but I listened to the world around me. I listened to a border collie approach me cautiously, unsure if I was friend or foe.
"Lua...? Hey."
Lua licked my hand and curled up to next to me.

I sprawled on the grass as the world chirped around me. I listened to not only what the earth had to say to me but also to what another man, a man taken with grief, had to offer to me. "Lua" offered me solace and I took it. The border collie of the same name offered me comfort and I took it. And the stars. They offered me all the beauty in the world and I left it. It's not for me to take.
"When everything is lonely I can be my own best friend."