City stars.

Two women walking toward, then past me in the sidewalk tonight. One sobbing, saying, "that's just so mean. Like, so meeeean." The other women just looked at her the whole time, walking. It's moments like that, when the lives of strangers press in on me, when I remember how big this world is. It's sorta the opposite of when I run into someone I haven't seen in years, and he or she is standing there talking to someone else I know, but from somewhere else, and I start singing "It's A Small World After All" to myself.
While I was walking the dark, unpopulated street to Arwen's to feed her cat a few weeks ago, all the lights in all the windows suddenly came into focus all at once, and my insignificance was suddenly almost overwhelming. Each window, a different life, none of them affected in the slightest by me walking down that street. By me living in their neighborhood. Our neighborhood. But I guess the other side of this coin is that what happened to that poor girl tonight really didn't seem to affect my path, except, of course, for making me ramble on about it for a bit. It has something to do with perspective. Whenever I'm starting to feel like I mean anything, I'll look around at all those windows. It's sorta like the city version of looking up at the stars and feeling insignificant in the universe.