here, tonight is, frankly, terrible for aurora viewing. barely any break in the clouds, moderate city lights, three in the morning. all the same, i ran outside to see if maybe i could find any last traces. and i got nothing i can concretely say is anything even close to aurora - maybe a patch of clouds are unusually bright tonight? maybe horizonways it's a little lighter than usual??
but it still got me out, and it got me to run over to and across one of the bridges at the river i live near, to see if maybe i could get somewhere just a little darker.
and i saw the freight train passing, from closer up than i had ever seen it before. it's a thing of beauty - tons of steel and fury in motion, pounding across the tracks with its wheels as its feet, transporting goods and materials somewhere north of here for who knows what - and even if it was something i could do any old night (or 3 am, i suppose), tonight it feels like it maybe meant something. i went out into the world looking to find something meaningful to me, and instead it found me right when i least expected it.
maybe someday, when i'm thirty-something instead of twenty-and-eleven-twelfths and my life is finally together, i'll have the money to fly up north and see the aurora borealis up close somewhere it isn't a super-secret-rarity. maybe the sun will be so kind as to flare up another time and shoot it so that it when it isn't so fucking cloudy. but maybe i don't need to see it? i'll shed a tear over missing the second Hot Single Insane Space Phenomenon In My Area this year, sure - i don't cry nearly enough, i think - but there's still a lot that's special to me here in my world on the ground for me to find, and i think that's great.
