It was on such a night that I took a walk for the first time in months. To clear my head, or rather to fill it with more thoughts, to think, mainly and not be disturbed by the whiz and the click of sitting at home, mind getting vapid and anaesthetised by the wheeze of air-conditioning and stale pornography. Stepping out of the house into the little park downstairs, the quiet seized me, and I heard the sound of my thinking come back to me, slowly at first, then in a rush of chatter so severe it left a ring in my ears.
The night is so quiet, I can smell the faint smoky scent of morning rising from the street, in the distance a car is whispering over tarmac, need to finish that paper by tomorrow but I'll get it done, put it aside, but that point you couldn't make, it's not convincing- no, you'll figure it out, a motorcycle is buzzing past somewhere behind me, crunch, my sandals chew grass, mm I didn't quite understand how the movie ended and it bugs me, did he die or not, he had inched closer to me as if to make his shoulder touch mine but I moved away because we had agreed to be impossible, which annoys me, frankly, because we would be perfect, ah fuck, there are things far more important than holding hands and shoulders kissing in this world, politics, politics are far graver, and I haven't read the papers in a while, and it irritates me but the news is depressing and politics is depressing and stale and staid, you haven't been writing much either, what are you doing with your time, what are you going to do with your life, don't keep shunting it aside, it won't solve itself like you tell people it will, I want to feel affection for somebody and be able to touch him, so many things I want, who doesn't want these things.
My heart grew heavy, thinking, it sank deep into some overgrown, teenaged cocktail of sadness and irritation, surging upwards, and I sighed.
"I am too old to be sighing like this, pathetically," I muttered to myself, and sniffed, amused.
And then, I saw him, sitting on a bench, arms folded, looking up into the sky. Handsome, even in the moonlight, perhaps more so because of it; a little finger in my mind could trace the fine silhouetted outline of his forehead, his nose, lips and chin, gently angled like a figure drawing, and my heart jumped at how pleasing his face was. His eyes were closed, but as I drew closer, he opened them, and they were magnificent eyes, large and smiling, and I realised he was smiling at me.
"Hi," he said, and I found I liked his voice, it was young and handsome like him. Emboldened by the late hour, perhaps, I returned the greeting. He looked at me appraisingly, head slightly cocked and smiling, as if he had been expecting me.
"Why're you up so late?"
"Needed to take a walk, clear my head."
"You can't clear your head by walking, all you end up doing is thinking some more."
"Is that why you're sitting here?"
"Partly. Mostly it's because I'm bored and like watching things drift by."
"But nothing drifts by at this time."
"Mm, you did," and he laughed quietly, and grinned, happily. Or mischievously. "But no, I like looking into the sky at night, it helps me come to terms with mortality."
"That's very deep."
"And pretentious, yes. But you should try it sometime, especially on nights like this one where the sky's really clear. You don't have to be religious, but the stars in the sky like that give you a sense of eternity."
I sat next to him and looked up, then back at him as he spoke again.
"You see, you just look up and try and take it all in," he looked up and stared deeply into the sky.
"The stars?"
"Mm, the stars, because there's nothing in the sky but stars and night for miles and miles, and the more you take in, the deeper you can go. It's boundless, it's fantastic."
He paused for a while, and I kept looking at him. It was fascinating how freely all this was coming from him.
"And then it looks and feels like it's too much to see, but then a little part of it fills you up and you keep going."
"Like drinking," I offered.
"Yes," he turned to look at me, pleased by the idea, "like drinking. Great metaphor. It really does quench that part of me that looks for meaning, for calm. I look into the sky, because it's the only thing here that doesn't end somewhere, and there's so much possibility out there that for a moment I feel like nothing here matters all that much."
I looked up and saw stars. My mind struggled at first for words to describe it. Arrayed, splayed, arranged, twinkling, and then it began to feel vulgar, as if to suggest that they had been placed there, that they were deliberate, that the stars twinkled playfully for my amusement, a flat, mawkish little picture painted by some silly, sentimental artist. Then, as if something had prodded the sky, the stars began to roll forward, layer upon layer, thickening and deepening, rushing earthwards and I thought, "how far it must go, forever can't begin to describe it." Nothing in life prepares you for looking into the night sky, because life is all about what you can and cannot do before you eventually die- the night sky teaches infinity and the beauty of being insignificant. I sat there, drinking stars, as it were, feeling it challenge everything I thought about brevity, life, possibility, god.
"They say God placed the stars in the sky," I said. "But that's demeaning, isn't it, in the face of how beautifully random and infinite they are."
"I don't know. Maybe."
Looking up, I thought the stars captured God, the essence of his vastness, his impossibility and infinity. Maybe God was conceived in a moment like this, long ago, by two people gazing up into the sky from an open plain.
I sat there with the other boy for a long time, not thinking, just stargazing, and I felt my mind clear like it had never done before. Then, sated, I got up, touched my companion on the shoulder, and walked home, lingering in the quietness of everything until the first thoughts began to break through again.
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