The Nothing
2005-06-06,

I'm not entirely sure that the sky is coming back.

While driving to work at a temporarily ungodly early hour, while sitting at a red light, I glanced out my window and saw a dark cloud swallowing everything around it. It was a large splotch of an ugly, sickly grey, and its outer reaches were vague and edgeless, fading into its surroundings and making it seem as though it were actually the rest of the sky that was vague and edgeless, disappearing into this grey void. It reminded me of the Nothing from The Neverending Story, the empty space that became as dreams died. A disheartening, if interesting, start to an otherwise casual, quiet morning.

It takes 43 muscles to frown, and only 15 to smile. It takes no muscular effort at all, however, to remain completely expressionless.

Work on the house is coming along. Electrical's done as much as it can be, so I'm drywalling in earnest. Painting has commenced in The Boy's room. His color of choice, which is on two walls, is Real Red, and boy is it. You walk in, and there's just this urge to call out like an air raid siren, "rrrrRRREEEEEEEEEEEED," and bump into it over and over again like a broken robot (surely, you must have as many broken robot experiences as I). The other two walls are white, so there's some visual respite. And once the furniture goes in and posters and such start going up, it won't be nearly as stark. We're also adding in a rectangular area of 'magnetic' paint, so he (and The Girl, in her room, once we get to it) can pin up whatever straight to the wall without having to poke holes. I just hope it works as well as it professes. It professed its merits for a long time, using words like 'hearken', 'verily' and 'forsooth'. I was impressed with its vocabulary, considering it was a pint-size metal can.

I guess I was wrong-- the sky came back, after all. I reckon that's a good thing. It would've been interesting to see the reaction to the sky just up and disappearing, turning into a blank grey canvas. I bet eventually we'd try rocketing a gigantic paint brush up into the former cosmos, just to see if we could make a new god to look up to.

-- End Transmission --