The View from the Top

I was a New Asia Bar last night, and managed steal a glimpse of the city’s night life from the 70^th floor. The panorama the of outside looked so microscopic from there. Just like tiny ants- moving little by little, without sense or purpose. Looking down from there, I think about the September evening world, where people must be going about their lives. Amidst the paling moon light under a starry sky, they must be walking down streets, shopping for things, boarding trains for home. And they think- if they think at all- that these things are too obvious to think about, just as I used to do.

These are the vaguely defined people, and I used to be a nameless one among them. Accepting and accepted, they live with one another beneath that light, and whether it lasts for a moment, there must be a kind of closeness and longing while they are enveloped in that light. I am no longer one of them, however. They are down there on the face of the Earth; I am up here staring at them with monumental calmness. They possess the light, while I’m in the process of losing it. It is here where I feel that I may never find my way back to that world, and I may never again be able to feel the peace of being enveloped in that light. It is then I feel a dull ache in the chest, as if something inside there is being squeezed to death.

With every sip of my bourbon coke, scenes of the surface of the Earth grow ever more distant. 2 realities co-exist simultaneously and the separation is obvious- a transparent glass panel from the building I am in. The sense of reality of the world below subsides bit by bit. The traffic in the streets becomes unfamiliarly emptier and the city is less brightly lit with each passing moment. My reality however, the reality up on the 70^th floor, seems unchanged, untouched and it surrounds me in its place. The place accepts me, I accept the place and I become increasingly absorbed in its’ presence.

The music switched to a song Nara heard when she 1^st met her ex-boyfriend. I know how it feels. How it brings back memories or essence of you. How it hurts. So it is when something dies; the very inanimate objects the loved one has touched in passing serve to wound us. After a while, I am hit again by a pang of numbness, a certain detachment and I can’t keep myself from smiling. It even feels good in a twisted way. What a tumultuous feeling- A cup that tastes bitter when we are sitting may be sweet indeed when we are standing. I think to myself- Keep smiling, keep laughing and don’t stop dancing. When the clock strikes 1, it will be time to return back to the world below; the world of the living.