4:09
The world at 4:09AM is a weird place. The air seems colder and meaner somehow. The sounds are quiet and yet so much louder than you would think. A car drives away into the distance, a leaf falls, my shoe scratches the pavement, and I can hear the sounds of the flame burning the cigar away into nothing as the stranger inhales the toxins deeply into his lungs. It's like walking through a world abandoned by a civilization that used to be. The entire world is a deep pang of realization that something went wrong. That one mistake. And the entire civilization vanished so quickly that people didn't have time to look around and take in the sounds of the magnolias blossoming. The tree stump I pass looks lonelier somehow.And yet, the world at 4:09AM is like that glorious moment when you realize that you're the only one home. You can play your music, you can read that book, you can sit there and stare at the wall without expecting the wall to stare you back down. It's that moment when you can expect everything from nothing. It's like being the only one home, except you're the only one in the world. Someone just forgot to turn off the lights. I pass another stranger walking briskly past me. Is he just cold or is he running away from something? He's coming back from visiting his friends. He has just finished a great new work of graffiti that will soon cause the world to be in awe. Or maybe he's the one that betrayed the civilization. Is he running away from responsibility?
The world at 4:09AM is the perfect time for an insane insomniac to ramble about insanity. It's at the exact moment when the gears turn inside the watch and the hour and minute hands click into place to indicate this exact time that her brain starts functioning clearly. It's when she wonders, "what would you do if you had the whole world to yourself?"
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