God Natt

I decided to put this story here too :D just so everyone can enjoy it. Feel free to share your comments on it.

God Natt

            Alone in the forest you begin to feel engulfed by the trees and the darkness of the shade that falls upon you from their long sweeping branches. Here, in the forest, there is life among the trees, but unless you were looking for it, you would surely miss it. The only noise you can strain your ear to hear is the gentle wind against the outstretched branches embracing the gusts that spur up as if it were random, and the swaying of the trees to some unknown tune. Occasionally you might hear a loud crack as a nearby animal gingerly walks through this majestic area breaking small twigs with their feet. But otherwise it feels as if you’re alone, only the life giving trees are there to support you on your journey. The woods portray on a person a sense of peace, a sense of safety. The trees freely provide shade from the sun and graciously give oxygen. All they require in return is the sun and the rich necessity of carbon dioxide released from our soul when we whisper to them. They seem so strong; they can survive the weather, so that we may live. Trees truly are givers. But sometimes we have to sacrifice these trees because we need something more. We use them to provide housing for people and fuel to travel. We drastically change the landscape. The solitude of the forest is quickly diminished and the raw land is left to be beaten by the sun. C'est la vie.

            With the trees slaughtered leaving only their remembrance, you can witness the sky. Night falls upon this planet, the stars come out to play, and paint their pictures and stories among the endless canvas of the heavens. For a brief moment while the sun is setting there may be a view that is quite remarkable. Although it may be painful and bad for your health it is near impossible not to catch a glimpse of the sunset, and at that moment your entire life changes. The sheer beauty of the sun, unaltered, perfect in every way; yet it is leaving you. This light of your life you once held so dear to you is now setting and leaves a large white hole in its place. The moon acts as just an unwilling replacement, but it is still just a hole in the expanse of darkness. It is hard to imagine how large the Earth truly is, the sun that once lead you by the hand through the darkness has now set across the seas to another land. I guess that is the danger of our lives revolving around one thing. When you look at the solar system you see the sun is in the middle of everything, we are revolving around it. Yet on earth it is so easy to assume that the sun is the one moving, it is the one that leaves each night. You can’t help but feel bad for the sun as it sits lonely in the middle of solar system with all of the planets revolving around it, like moths to the light. But you cannot see this in the night sky; the traces of sunlight are gone. Unfortunately, we still might see one of the planets going through the sky, getting in revolution with the sun. It can move, it has color, it can do things one could only wish to do. They are something special in the darkness.

 As the night continues you begin to feel comfortable with the darkness, almost embrace it like a blanket that a mother might give to her child. In the darkness there is just you and there you can find yourself. Some are afraid of the dark, but this is something I can’t understand. Maybe they are afraid to be confronted by themselves, for one cannot lie to one’s self, or they may fear something lurking in the shadows, a monster of their own imagination. There is no reason to hide in the dark, it is already dark no one can see you. Darkness evens the playing field, makes everyone the same, it tortures those who only see. Darkness brings what some strive for, hope for, the time to sleep, but even in sleep some can’t escape the darkness. In complete darkness, like in the depths of the earth, you notice any light streaming in through the cracks, imperfection in the earth or possibly a gateway for the oxygen to enrich your lungs and providing you your life to carry on.

Ironically the thing needed for our survival is the same thing that can cause us so many problems. The sun gives people skin cancer, blindness, and can heat up our lives to an unbearable level. Light comes from the sun, it cloaks everything with its penetrating rays. Light does not ask if it can intrude on our nights, it just does. It is always darkest before the dawn, and then the sun rises. Somehow day after drooling day it fights off the night for another attempt of day. The sun crawls back to us bearing gifts of a new tomorrow and a brighter today. It is still beautiful with its sunrise, but something is lost, what was found in the darkness has shown us something new. For without the darkness we would not fully understand light.

Light powers our days, we harvest it, change it, mold it to suit our purposes; it gives us the ability to live on through the long, bitterly cold nights. We rely on that one thing, the sun, to give us our endless lives, without it there would be no way to carry on living. Or that is what we are taught to believe. The long arms of the sun grasp us and hold us close, its power makes our lives flourish. Populations grow under this power, technology blooms, and transportation bears new fruit. The raw gift of technology, a gift that we pick to devour for our hunger, falls to us from the sun. This gift draws people together that are separated by thousands of miles, the sun does this to spite us, trick us into forgetting the person next to us. The sun wants us to feel its burning sting upon our skin. Yet, the moon sits alone, so many stars around it; it changes trying to find approval, and then slowly disappears. The darkness overtakes this world, yet we are ignorant to its attempts of attention, its gift of darkness, we taint it with our imitation of the sun with the lights we create.

We make other things like cars to fill in the gaps between lives. Long ago the idea of driving to work or having a meeting in another time zone was simply unthinkable. Today we have cars that can take us hundreds if not thousands of miles from where we live, all thanks to the sun. The illusion of time is orchestrated by the sun. The sun is the puppeteer of our mornings and nights, it is what we have based our idea of time on. In only 108 minutes one plane can pollute the entire night sky around the whole world with its imitation of the stars and planets. We think we can replicate the motion of planets around the sun with our satellites and planes, but these things do not bring us closer to the thing that once gave life.

 The numerous places we can go have expanded making our world feel smaller. But the reality is that our world, our home, has never changed sizes, it is still 6,380km in radius; it still has different time zones, it is still miles away from the sun. People can meet people from completely different continents; go to school in different countries, share information, and cultures. They can look up at the sun and get a sense of familiarity wherever they are. Spending time in a different country on our world helps you understand the world in general. You learn about the scars and gouges carved in by the sun all over the world. Each culture has a different relationship with the sun, using, and growing off of its power but tortured by its dependence. You feel an attachment to the people you stay with and meet, but are still reminded of home. What can unite us shows us the differences that divide us. This is the trick that the sun has planted in its gift of technology. It is hard to imagine that the moon you look up to, the sun that shines down on you, they are both the same sun and moon for the people who live on the other side of the world from you. Sometimes looking up to the endless sky you feel closer to these places you have never visited, but then you realize you cannot be closer to these places by just looking. There is no such thing as a relationship with these places through video, text, or the stars. It is not the same as being there, living there, feeling there. That’s when realization of how large this world actually is.

One world separated by oceans, fueled by sun, traveled by people, in light and darkness, and we are all still stuck here. The sun sets once more; the light is shattered by the darkness. The sky is littered with planets and stars endlessly stretching out, begging for attention. There are galaxies of which we know not of, stories that have yet to be told, and places that wish to be explored. But we can forget about that in the woods, the woods hide all these things. The trees provide us life even in the darkness. The trees are always there. Then the trees are cut down. Life begins.