Nothingness

Nothingness
There is a road that winds its way across the Santa Clarita valley, snaking around shopping centers, restaurants, neighborhoods, and business. “Valencia Boulevard will be extended as part of future development” reads a sign propped effortlessly against the railing that marks the road’s present end. The powers-that-be plan to extend the road over the mountains to connect it with the rest of the world, but, for now, the road simply ends. Thousands of cars approach this sign everyday and thousands of cars U-turn in disappointment, unaware of what lies just out of their reach; the dusty Eden just past the gravel.
If a boy were to plant his feet at the base of this railing and toss a small, shiny rock nonchalantly past the road, it would land on a hill. Not a towering Rocky peak or a sloping Appalachian mountain, but a small, rather unimpressive hill. A hill fit not for repelling or hiking, but for tossing small rocks over. The rock would undoubtedly clear the top of the hill and skip once or twice through the coarse underbrush, perhaps settling beneath a thin layer of sand and dirt. And the boy might wonder where that rock decided to make its final resting place. And he might cross that railing and climb that hill and explore that underbrush. And he might be led to the top of that hill, with nothing above or around him but an infinitesimal sea of oxygen and freedom.
On top of Nothingness Hill – my own name, free of bureaucracy – time is absent. The overwhelming heat provides an alarming reassurance of the awesome power of nature. A tense stillness filters the air of its impurities on an early summer afternoon. I am overcome by the feeling that the hill’s existence is only defined by the time I am in contact with it; as if it comes into being the moment my shoe first touches its soil and flickers out of reality as I return to the road. The first few minutes of this existence consist of my scratching and clawing over the rough bushes and dead undergrowth to the very tip-top of Nothingness. One quick circle of my feet tells me that I am above everything. No buildings pierce my view of the horizon, no lampposts obscure the flawless blue sky, no chain-link fence teases me with empty promises of exploration. Nothing.
The faint chirping of a car horn drags my eyes down from the brilliant blue space above my head to the unnaturally colored civilization below. Then the familiar yet regrettable smell of car fumes and asphalt creeps into my nose followed by the conscious cough that such smells evoke, and I am reminded of the alternate reality that strangles the rest of the world. Traffic lights blink in and out of agreement, directing the masses. Lines of crimson red brake-lights paint roadways with the steady glow of frustration. Everyone is headed somewhere, looking for something, convinced of their need to understand somehow.
An unnerving silence accompanies my life atop the hill, similar to the silence one experiences in the seconds following a power outage, when your televisions and your pupils submit to total darkness. You cannot help but feel wholly emancipated from all humanly concerns up there. Nothing and no one is present to judge, interpret or acknowledge your existence. It is liberation at its core.
And yet, in this moment of absolute freedom, a pervading sense of emptiness swallows my thoughts. It seems my entire life I have imagined Nothingness Hill as a nirvanic state of existence, where nothing happens and nothing is wrong. But once up here, I realize what is missing. Absence of all means absence of good. Surely we cannot live our lives hoping merely to escape them?
A whirlwind of dusts tears at my legs. I glance down instinctively – could that small, shiny rock have landed right here – right where I landed? A moment of chaos at my feet ends with the rejoining of earth and ground, drawn together by the natural forces of attraction. There is no rock. Just earth and ground.
I decide to leave the rock in the place to which it was naturally drawn, also, (best not to upset the nature of things) and begin my steady descent of Nothingness. Twenty breaths escape me, leave me standing with my feet planted at the base of the railing that marks the end of the hill and the beginning of the road. As I step over the boundary and onto Valencia Boulevard, the hill flickers back into nonexistence just as quickly as it had appeared.
Will I ever return? Will Nothingness still be there? Will I be drawn in by its liberating emptiness? I don’t know. Nor do I care.
Nothingness is still nothing without the people who mean everything.