Aspect of Sky
It would not be the last time Herbert Ramsay would look up at the sky, but it would be the last time the sky would look back. Whether it would be the starlit heaven of a wintry night, the grey overcast castles of autumn, or the bright blue of a summer afternoon, Herbert would see up above what all men saw: the great void of space, a monument to our insignificance.
It was also the second happiest day of his life, the happiest being that glorious day in his early youth when he discovered masturbation. That was when he truly understood what being alone meant, and how to take advantage of it. It was that lesson in loneliness which prepared him for the loss of his sky.
Much like his brother, a former mad man of God who ultimately found his paradise between the legs of a tattooed French gal, Herbert had spent much of life convinced that the greatness of the world lay behind a veil of mystery. Our existence in this world was to glorify that mystery, our actions to wake echoes in eternity. Those thoughts he saw expressed in the sky, the countenance of infinity. But where once was solemnity, was solitude, an independence at the expense of forever. What was mysterious and magical now was natural, pure, free of outside influence. A life was part of a chain reaction set in motion at the dawn of cosmos and would occupy its reserved space for a flicker.
In his liberation, could what he had found replace what he had lost? Was his new-found happiness another illusion, a defence mechanism in an amoral universe? Earthly pleasures were all one could ask to fill the endless days of youth, but when the flesh grows soft and the mind weary, doubts arise that long for that enigma separated from mortal coil.
But now he was alone, and would have to live without his sky. He had drawn aside the veil and found the mystery less tangible than dust mites dancing on a sunbeam. He had awakened from a dream, and it excited him. Excitement, however, often wanes with the coming years, and Herbert dreaded the day when hollow loneliness should be all that shall remain of this frightful freedom, and the sky will never again recognise its own.