The New Normals Chapter 4

The sun had set. Kit and Roland drove through expansive desolation. The desert air had grown dry, bitter and oppressive and the sky above had opened up dramatically. It was a cloudless night; the stars glimmered ecstatically from every direction. Roland stared upward through his window, captivated, the patrolman’s baton teetering idly from side to side across his palm once again.

“It’s a beautiful night,” Roland began. From many people this would have seemed like small talk, but not from Roland; there was a relaxed sense of importance embedded within his words. Most people would have felt a need to break the silence for selfish reasons, but Roland differed here, too. He was comfortable in silence. Roland didn’t like to waste his words, so when he spoke it almost invariably served a purpose.

“Sure is,” Kit responded, half-waiting for Roland to continue.

“I used to look out at the stars every single night as a child. When I got a job with National Aeronautics and Space Administration I — “

“The National Aeronautic — wait, you worked for NASA!?”

“It was a fairly brief stint. They’re big on rules over there. Anyway, after NASA, I moved west. And then east — and then far east. I lived in the mountains of Tibet for the better part of two years. I met a monk — a lot of them actually.”

Roland paused briefly at this and cleared his throat. With an eyebrow now raised in disbelief, Kit waited for him to continue.

“I befriended a leper named Rin-pa who, would you believe, owned a leopard? ‘The leper with a leopard!’ the locals joked. Never seemed practical. He didn’t find much humor in the nickname, truthfully, on account of the leprosy and all… He’d had the leopard since he was only 11; don’t ask me why his parents thought it would be a good gift for a child. But alas, he couldn’t care for it anymore. Gave me the leopard. Her name was Ku-gi… Koogey? Coogi? Never did actually learn the spelling… Rin-pa said she was growing old and sick, but it turned out that she was only pregnant! Mind pulling over here?”

“Sorry?” replied Kit, disarmed by the abrupt shift in Roland’s story.

“Looks like the perfect spot.”

“For what exactly?”

Kit’s car slowed to a gentle stop and Roland got up from his seat and opened the door.

The hot desert air from earlier was beginning to resemble more of an arctic gust. Roland began carelessly walking away from the car and out into the pitch black desert. He looked aimless but directed. As darkness overtook them, Kit followed only the faint sound of Roland’s sandy footsteps. After only a few seconds, though, the wind turned even that into a colossal test of concentration for Kit.

After four or five minutes, Roland stopped at no spot in particular and began to look upward again. Kit was so unable to see or hear now that he nearly bumped into Roland, a little surprised to have even found him again.

“Can you see what I was saying earlier?”

“Just a few minutes ago, you mean?”

“No, about the meaninglessness.”

As if on cue, the wind seemed to slow now to a near-halt. Roland looked over at Kit importantly. Kit could make out only the faintest contours of his face. The desert had slipped into a profoundly enchanting silence.

“You do see it right?”

“I guess so.”

“It doesn’t take much. At least for me. Seven billion people walking around this planet, but it doesn’t take much to find the places that can remind us.”

“Remind us of what exactly?”

“Ever wonder about the miles and miles of wilderness that surround some of this country’s highways? It’s baffling really, that people just drive through it, carelessly flipping through their radio stations on their way to some job that doesn’t matter.”

A huge gust of air howled quietly in the distance.

“A lot of problems can arise from giving your life too much meaning. I know I’m repeating myself here but, the jobs, the money, all the ownership of all the things — It’s an exhaustive charade to keep up, really. Sometimes you only need to get away from civilization for a few minutes to keep life from feeling too meaningful. It’s a breath of fresh air — the meaninglessness. It’s beautiful not to matter nearly as much as we think we do. Liberating, even.”

“You brought me out here to tell me this?”

“Did you have a better place to be?”

Kit shrugged his shoulders in total darkness.