Carnival

The lights go out. The world turns. Everything sinks without a trace.

For someone who stays up too late, what lives inside is: disappointment and doubt about oneself, resentment and helplessness over the past, a reaching for life, a fear of unconsciousness.

He wants so badly to hold onto the hours of being alive. He wants to feel life with intensity. He wants to taste everything life has to offer; he wants to prove his existence to this world.

He resists sleep. His hands grip tight around that six-inch screen, the widest world he can hold.

It is late. Outside, the stray voices of lingerers gradually die into the rustling of leaves.

Pressure rises from somewhere inside him. The computer fan hisses softly. Dim light seeps through the curtains.

But he chooses to sleep anyway, carrying the indelible pain, because he believes that waking is rebirth — he believes that the clarity of the sky when he opens his eyes will wash away his sorrow, he believes the new day will be better.

Light falls on water, rippling with a faint glimmer. But light like this will not last long before it evaporates with the water, as if it had never come into the world at all, leaving only a hazy memory. Light this delicate, rain this delicate, blurs his eyes.

Rain’s beauty and sunlight’s beauty are entirely different, he thinks. The clouds’ weeping wraps a rainy day in something like a thin membrane of faint sadness, as though feeling itself could be diluted by rain.

He remembers a sunny day.

As the sun rose, the city’s gray was worn away bit by bit, and the light turned magnificent. The forest of buildings that had been drifting with dust was lifted by the morning sun, becoming solemn and beautiful. The fierce sun poured bright light into every corner of the city, and his mood brightened along with it. While the sky’s colors were still vivid, he ran toward the sun; the vitality of his body radiated outward like sunlight, and he reveled in his glittering youth, bathed in warm light.

Rain falls on him. The swaying movement of the truck ahead and its deep red paint are so beautiful. But the pattern of the tail lights isn’t quite clear. It’s moving too fast — why can’t moving things be made to stop? Before he even tries to wipe the raindrops from his glasses, his hand is already reaching, involuntarily, toward the truck speeding past.

Reflected in the truck window is a small corner of this world: a rainy day, blurred figures.

In a flash, a girl grabs hold of his wrist, and the truck roars past them.

Coming back to himself, his gaze moves from the blurred tail of the truck to the girl. In that instant, countless colors flare in her eyes. The silver light in the water shimmers clear; even the grey-white clouds overflow with something luminous.

He feels the whole world gripping him. ¹