Drunk Off Insignificance

Suddenly, in that one moment, age was of little importance. What I knew, what I didn’t know, what I’d been taught to believe – none of it mattered anymore, because I was drunk off the feeling of insignificance. And feeling tiny, when I was still little, was more comforting than anything else – like being surrounded by other young Gracie’s; all looking at eachother, and then back to the sky, and at eachother again thinking, “I, well, I um…wow, I don’t even-” in a perplexed shrugging manner, “-it’s pretty extraordinary though…”

My grandparents’ farm in Illinois, had this clearing near the lake that my Uncle George worked hard to clean, so my sisters, cousins, and I would have an area to ‘smore and tell stories; campfire and fish. At a naive age, the spot was the most tangible experience to Utopia I’ll ever receive. It smelled of old sweet berries, like a perfume that’s been resting on a sweater in the attic for years and years. And in the fall, the air was crisp; clean enough to break and hear the atmosphere crack, and that’s where I saw it- a landscape more beautiful than any earthly rock or soil. Made up of such simplicity in color, it couldn’t be real. Diamond reflections of exploding light, flickering with such a strength, that I could feel jealousy from holy sanctuary candles. It was, in the most undemanding, effortless terms: the most angelic spectacle I’ve ever seen thus –

Years later, amidst the haunting of such an alluring presence, I remember feeling angry. Angry that I was in love with a sight, with a concept, I couldn’t fully understand. Why was I not given the mental capacity to equate it’s dimensions, to solve its many spacial secrets. Why have a feeling? If it’s not meant to be mine?

These days, I feel rather grateful, that I was given a scientific brain of maximum mediocracy. For, the more I know, the more vast I’d become, and smaller it would, without doubt, appear. And I know better than to meddle in the Universe’ dimensions…I should dare not tease her about that.