i am a rock; i am an island. (simon and garfunkel) that’s where the word isolation comes from, anyway: the past participle isolated, from the italian “isolato” which means secluded, from the italian “isola” which means island, from the latin “insula”, also meaning island.

i’m looking out my window to a familiar dark scene which i will leave behind me in a week’s time. i can’t see much, some ghostly silhouettes of a house and some trees, and the stars poking through the night like tiny moth-holes in a black curtain. and four lit windows. the tinny buzz of television french is raw and soft in my ears. the kitchen is lit a dim, tired, incandescent yellow. a similar light glows from behind a curtain of ivy, from the frosted window of the next room. a floor above, a window flickers with the bright light of the television. but it is the dimmest window. another incandescent light still burns in the next window. it’s sad how we’re more connected than ever, and we’ve never felt more alone.

tonight is so clear. look at all those stars; look at how goddamned ugly the stars are. (alkaline trio) that’s how you knew it was a wonderful night to die. it’s so clear and still you can see next to nothing. starlight and solitude. the air tastes like night, too, a little stale, a little fresh, like the world is being renewed. i always like to pretend that the world is renewed at night. but i stay up all night and i see nothing new. i get up in the morning and i feel nothing new, just whatever yesterday forgot to wash away. something for today to take. i find the concepts of yesterday and tomorrow quite useless. if we contemplate those concepts, we spend today thinking about the good times we had yesterday and planning the good times we’ll have tomorrow. here’s a reality for you: tomorrow never comes. you are perpetually living today, living now.

i feel a little more alone than usual tonight. i finally got one response to a text message, planning tomorrow. no one’s responded to the message planning saturday, or the message planning some formless future.

i just wanted to immortalize the now though, with abrasive television french quiet in my ears and the sound of the autoroute in the background, the ugliest stars in the sky above casting shadows on a world that should be sleeping below. and the sweet, deceptive taste of night air. i shall catch cold.