Touches of Infinity
photo by catherine campbell
Touches of Infinity
second year Anna van Eekeren
I can’t breathe anymore.
I’m freaking out, panicking, crying in my car as I refuse to go into internship even though I’m already ten minutes late because nothing matters but the sunlight dancing, gleaming, glistening off the rear-view mirror in enchanting, mesmerizing beauty.
Spectrums of light glint tauntingly outside, a kaleidoscope of emotions, consciousness, and desire. A dazzling sheen that ripples and reflects the shifting iridescent sky until it explodes into a shower of cascading tendrils that glimmer and sway, my turbulent expression wavering in the blinding display, chaos teeming beneath the surface.
I want to scream. I want to yell until my throat turns raw and my voice bleeds from the pain. I want to hurl myself into a void and let the darkness envelop me entirely. I want to feel all that love and emotion that renders humanity.
How meaningless, how utterly fleeting and insignificant am I? The banality of my pitiful existence fading into nothingness like chalk on a rainy day, washed out and bleached – a dull remnant of the vibrant shell I once inhabited, an evanescing stream of longing and purpose that threatens to consume me, the immensity of the universe and vastness of oblivion pressing down upon me, suffocating me in an alluring embrace of fractured fantasies, discarded dreams, and shattered scars of abandoned ambitions and then –
Flashes, a moment of serenity amidst the spiral. Something releases inside of me, an ineffable sensation, and my mind swirls in reminiscence.
It’s that feeling of racing down the highway at night, blasting music with your closest friend and screaming your hearts out to 80s and 2000s hits, the songs swelling as the cityscape passes by in a captivating blur of electric hues.
Or it’s that feeling when you’re lifeguarding and it’s storming outside and you’re standing with the other guard in comfortable, soothing silence, staring at the pouring rain that increases in intensity as the day wanes on and suddenly, a breathtaking sunset mirrored in the water’s eye, splashes of color flowing from all directions.
Or it’s that feeling when night has fallen at the park and you’re riding the Rip-Ride Rocket with friends, a grid of woven neon colors illuminating the world below, the stars shimmering in the endless sky, the wind rushing through your ears, roaring, pounding, shaking your body as you soar through the atmosphere, touching infinity, time stretching into an endless runway of possibility and wonder.
It’s the ability to see more, to feel more than what’s practical, what’s rational, what’s logical, to feel that weight of the world against you and all your conflicts crashing around you, and yet you don’t care. You don’t care about your insignificance or what’s happening because in that moment, when you’re gazing at the piercing white clouds and gentle rolling crescents, the sand sinking underneath your feet, a chorus of laughter filling the air as your friends beam at you, that playful banter you’ve missed so much, you feel alive, you feel whole and everything else doesn’t matter; everything else vanishes.
It’s making random Tik Toks and messing around and not caring who catches you because there’s the thrill of getting caught and breaking the rules. It’s sneaking out and swimming at 4 a.m. while there’s a storm going on, lightning flashing overhead, thunder reverberating through the atmosphere, the sky resonating with fury and power and destruction yet pure beauty and intimacy. It’s doing reckless and random and spontaneous and enthralling things just for the sake of doing it, for sheer exhilaration.
It’s seeing the world for more than what it is and feeling more than you dare to envision and being with the people you love and know and feeling overwhelming, undeniably, ineffably infinite.
The muffled sounds of anguish and despair slowly dissolve and as my eyes clear because there’s that streak of light again, shining wistfully, flittingly against the metallic surface in captivating grace, refracting the turmoil in my head until I glance at the clock and –
It’s 8:30 am.
Thirty min late.
F***
Time to go in.