Mood Piece February 16 2018

The lighthouse might as well be part of the landscape here. It had weathered with the sea side so long it simply blended into the scenery if you stood in just the right places. He must have seen it a thousand times in his life; so many times that his brain almost never registered it anymore. It was the white noise in his drive. He wasn't sure if he'd ever in his life seen it on though. Perhaps it had been used when he was a kid, a few lifetimes ago, but certainly not these days.

He wondered if any lighthouses were still in use along the seaboard. He supposed there had to be, even today it was better to trust in your senses when things got truly dark. How long would that be true though? How long before every late-night watchman who guided sailors by carefully tended light was replaced by the cool blue glow of a screen and a faith in the invisible filaments that lay crisscross across the earth? The thought brought a stale weight to his mind. He cast around for something brighter.

Maybe he could take his sister's kids here next summer, he thought. The place was boarded up, obviously, but it wouldn’t be too hard to break into and that would just add to the experience. He had to hold onto his title as the cool uncle, after all. The image made him smile and he made a mental note to pick up a crowbar next time he was in town. It felt appropriate, somehow, that the old beacon should become an adventure in childhood memories here at its end. Even if it never again lit the seas maybe it could light up a warm summer night in the mind of his niece; something good to look back on when such things could never be new again.

As he rounded the bend he saw the sparse buildings and fences in a new light. How many would still be here in thirty or forty years? How many fewer still being used? He felt like he was driving through the ruins of a civilization not yet passed, something time was already leaving behind. It seemed strange that he could watch it all in a single life, the passing of an age in the space of a single man. Perhaps, though, it was a privilege. Not everyone was able to stand so balanced between what was and what was to be. And besides, he mused, such things were always new through the eyes of a child.