In Boxers on a Tuesday Night in the Dark

The tic-tic-tic of clicking keys and the steady hum of the laptop fan accompany my loneliness. I’m in my room in the dark, with only the light of the computer screen to illuminate this space. There is an intimacy in this strange and awful silence, a perk of life in the darkness and artificial light. I am partaking of the silence like a drink of cool water, and the result is a calm and some words on the page. Is this the visceral, bountiful, beautiful, deep-breathing better life, sitting in boxers on a Tuesday night alone in a dark room knowing that God is there but not really knowing about rhyme or reason or love or importance or why? Yes, except for the loneliness part. It can be quite wonderful, sometimes, to hear nothing more than breathing and humming and chirping and clicking. But there is nothing more bitter to drink than a warm glass of nobody-else-around-when-you’d-really-like-to-chat. It is the cup of the rejects and the godless and the unwanted-or so the common thinking goes. But tonight I drink my tepid cup of nighttime joe with serenity in the inner chambers, moving through and between and on top of and beside the peripheries of thought and dreams and worship in the silence. Tic-tic-tic, hum, tic-tic-tic, hum. And on and on. The quieter and blacker it grows, the further the doors of thought creak open, and my proximity to the heartbeat of God and the world waxes poetic and deafening.