The Old Ones, by Night

I remember when we used ride around and get so stoned and nothing else mattered. I'd press my forehead to the damp and crisply chilly window and look at the lights ripping by as if they'd be the death of us, some illuminated tons of steal pummeling our car. And we'd be hurt or worse but it wouldn't matter because the real tragedy would be that a bunch of honor roll kids were smoking pot when it happened. 

~

I remember exactly where I was when I heard about the suicides of two different friends--the first, in my bedroom, and the second, driving to my new job. I quit later that week. The first time, I held back tears. The second, I tried not to die with him.

~

Every night I spent in the car with my friends getting baked and wasting money and time, (such precious time,) was worth it, because I wasn't alone. If those lights lit up our car for a second longer than they did just then, we'd have burned out bright. For once, in each other's company we'd all really finally lose it, as opposed to the defense with which we covered ourselves like the blanket of night in which we used to drive around and get so stoned and nothing else mattered. 

Down, Out

The girl lay in her bed with the television volume low, her eyes closed, facing the wall. The box flickered an old black and white film, in which a mentally handicapped golf caddy follows his cup-winning "partner" to the stunning Cathrine Taylor's vacation home- but that's not focus, just the vessel.

"What does it mean to think, just think and be left with my own thoughts?" She's then reminded of a study once discussed with a friend, in which people preferred to electrocute themselves rather than "be left alone with their own thoughts."

"Left alone with my own thoughts," she thought. Just as you read it, heard it in your head, so did she. Plain as day, as they say, the words plunked silently in her mind, and sunk to the bottom of her empty well, ever-falling because there was no bottom. Erased from the chalkboard, gone as quick as it materialized.

She thought of the study, the people now with their cell phones, at the time removed from their cars and t.v.s and twitter.

On-screen flickered: a different time, a generation of their own thoughts... Not completely (of course, they filmed it, there's that,) but more so than today's world of blinking billboards and Pandora radio. But back then, at night, when her father's mother lay facing the wall, what stones plunked in her mind? And did she hear their silence the same? The girl thought thoughts would seem louder then; the world was a quieter place. She wondered if that was what they meant by "quiet your thoughts," because to her, the saying never made much sense. How could anyone hear what they were thinking if they thought quieter? 

The girl didn't like thinking about thinking, but she had to think to try to quiet her thoughts. She stared into the back of her eyelids at the almost shapes of dim colored light that faded in and out. She pictured a beach she had never been to, one that might and probably does not exist. But was imagining part of the thought-process, too?

She thought of meditation, but that only conjured up some Jesus prayer she read about in a secular book. But surely, prayer was thought, too.

She wasn't sure how to stave off thinking, however sleep seemed like the only viable option. At least in her dreams, if they were "thought," she wouldn't have to think about thinking.

But to in order to sleep, the girl would have to put her phone down and stop writing down her every thought, before they plunked down through her endless empty well, and silent as they were to begin with, were never heard from again.