The End of the World is Lasting Forever

These baby blue, cinnamon apple red and lemon colored candles that I keep around me are burning out. I go to pick up the bright yellow-colored one, the one with a butterfly shaped into the wax, but it hides sparkles in my palm. Now I have sparkles all over my face. My mom laughed, but the ones in my hair will probably be there forever.

My keyboard is sparkling.

Speaking of home, it's my last night here, and then off for a few more weeks. Time in a real bed has been something of an ironic twist. I sleep on a twin, circa middle school, sitting on a classic wooden frame from a garage sale re-finished in a garage to look like kiddie beds from the movies, covered with flowery sheets from the 80's (in China). I wake up every morning with a sore back. My body is more used to sleeping bags on carpet and lightly cushioned gray upholstery. Not for long though. Two more weeks and I'll have to get acquainted with this bed again, and to my last quarter here.

Everyone has those moments when they look back and wish they could have done more in the time they had. The difference for me is that I set the time limit. Maybe I'll cheat and set my deadline back a little longer. Two weeks into winter, maybe three or four, and by then I will definitely be done with 'social projects.' Until then, I still have to couch-surf a week with strangers, spend more time at the beach, and sleep with the top down once. I'll miss the candles.

Speaking of candles, there's a big difference between ending something and just having something die out. I have a friend who will never bow out a candle once he's lit it. The wax will settle in weird ways, and when you come back to light it later you just get weird light. In Buddhism, blowing out a candle is often related to achieving Nirvana. Everyone is surrounded by an overwhelming light of feeling, pain, 'being,' but you can make this light smaller, into the light from a candle, so small that you have no possessions, no family and no attachments, and then extinguish even this. Suffer no more. I am of the crowd that does not like to blow out candles. It all seems more poetic to cap it, cut off the air, and watch the light fade.