late_night_conspiracies werewolf johnny's dad looked up at him from his usual place down on the street in front of his window. is there anyone behind me he asked? no. johnny replied. it was the usual answer for the usual question. how could this man ask such probing questions and yet also seem so answerless himself? "sometimes i feel the night behind me and it's scary. when i was younger i used to walk down an empty street as if i owned it. i just don't feel like i own them anymore. before i left my old life behind, i used to be unable to sleep. i could barely sleep. i used to listen to this radio show where callers would call in and talk about conspiracy theories, the occult, the unknown. they'd talk about how they were the antichrist or were followed by an ill-wishing alien life who curses them. and at first i thought they were wanting attention or depressed, but then, they were all so accepting. even when they were skeptical of their stories, and they actually made them dig for proof on these stories. but they gave them that chance. i started to love the show, i needed it to fall asleep. well because, it made sense to me. just look at that night sky and don't you think there's more out there? and isn't it. well if it wasn't our fault wouldn't that be nice? i mean, i don't know why some things happen, and i don't know why i should accept chance as an answer. " johnny thought about how sometimes he thought someone out there was thinking about him, and how even the thought that someone was scheming against him was more comforting than the lonliness of only being known, and knowable to those you stand in front of, or succeed in communicating yourself to. to be known even better than you know yourself, it was frightening, but it felt hopeful as well. to have forces of good and evil vying for you? what flattery. johnny did remember during the night hearing his father in the other room the murmur of other voices, and it was comforting. it was like this exact thing they were talking about. johnny's dad continued, "i have gained more faith and love in losing faith in the expected than i ever could have if i had just kept on thinking that my life was all there was. you have to surrender at some point to it, all of the mystery. if you ignore that it's even there, you can never solve it." johnny thought about kira. he looked out, the sky was so perfectly dark that the streetlights looked like lanterns in a coal mine. he almost thought to check if anyone was behind his father. instead he concentrated on him, focusing his eyes on the man straining his face upward, with a smile that seemed ludicrous. it made johnny think of a situation in which a man had to tell someone, some authorities that someone was drowning or dying or in desperate trouble, someone he loved too, but was waiting his turn because he had always been taught manners. it looked thin and wearing that smile. not in a menacing way, but, as if at any moment he would fall to his knees and cry out some truth. or perhaps he did not know the truth, but only knew the cry. johnny felt so shaken by his father's visage that he almost felt his mother was right to keep him away from him. he was hard to make out in this light, but he was still there, trying to find the next word like fumbling for matches "well, it's just that, well, but..." and every now and then a noun that must have meaning to him that it has to no one else (the way you read epics from another time, and the nouns mean roughly the same physical thing, but lose every bit of what makes that physical thing matter) "mountain, well, it's just that, goddess" in the dim light he seemed like a trick of the mind, the way the light pools into a stopsign pole, or a shadow and for a second it's almost enough movement to think it alive. after a couple more words, his father's usual, "i love you all" johnny told his father goodnight. when he closed the window he felt childhood fears all over him again. there were hands in the darkness, voices past the window, the mirror held another world, and under the bed atom sized angels and devils fought for his soul. perhaps all of these other worlds fought for dominion and kept this world balanced. he didn't know. he felt like a child again because the regular had a weakening cutoff from the imaginable. both were menacing, both were fantastic. 040522 ... jane late_night_ramblings 070517 ... jane late_night_rambling 070517 ... . the Night conspires with the stars to arrive late, while the Late conspire with the Night to become Stars 070518 what's it to you? who go blather from