Taking a Page Out of Someone Else's Book

's a really good metaphor. When you think about it.

I mean, I think you can really come to know a person through the things that they read and by reading said things yourself. It's the whole walking a mile in their shoes kind of deal, to mix metaphors. Which, apparently, is surprisingly easy to do this early.

And yet, here in suburbia, it is apparently also not very early. My parents are both awake and just left. My dad to go to the airport. My mom to take him to the shuttle bus.

Yep. There's the hum of the car pulling out of the driveway.

Out on the roads, I saw more than a dozen cars. Which is impressively few cars, considering just how many people live around here, but quite a bit more than I was expecting. I think the late night crowd of bar hoppers and late night joyriders transitions seamlessly into an early morning cadre of 6am commutes, fishermen, campers, and folks headed to the airport, like dad.

Oh, and don't get me started on the highway. I think it's a law around here. The highway must always have cars on it. At all times.

But right now, here in bed, all I can here is the clacking of my own keyboard strokes and the dull, distant roar of wind somewhere outside on another unremarkable winter's night. Er- morning.

It's easy in the dark to become a little disembodied. A silent, ethereal observer to the world. It's like removing all the details. Fade to black. Darkness is good like that. And bad.

I guess the lesson of the day is simply to realize that you can only ever find pockets of serenity. The world's gotten too fast for it to last. And you don't have to look too far or long to see the chaos and change. *Cue garage door* But that being said, it's very important to seize upon, when you can, some moments of solitude, of silence, of insubstantial sensation.