Looking Up

the sky is so large, what a mess, it's just everywhere

I wrote this in my journal earlier this year while at my part-time job figuring my life out. I didn’t want to share it then because I thought I could make it better. But months later, as it’s been sitting in my journal, and as I quit said job months ago, I see there’s nothing more that needs to be said. I think it’s already perfect. And also, I don’t believe in figuring things out anymore.

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Looking Up

So, I started this shitty job, except it’s not that shitty, it’s just that it’s not writing or anything I really love to do.

But, what I do get is people. I get to watch them. I watch them enter the building and look mouths agape at the wide glass architecture, the high ceilings, and the art, as they try to figure out where they’re going. And as an employee of my shitty job, I have to ask them, do you need help finding where you’re going? More often than not, the people who are looking up, say no, they don’t need help. And I watch them resume their glance, stumbling in awe across the white tile floor.

It confuses me because they do look lost and I don’t think they know where they’re going, but they would rather spend a few extra minutes, face towards the ceiling, figuring it out on their own.

The people with faces forward, or deep down at their phones, almost always accepted help. But those who immediately entered and noticed what was above, did not.

On my break, I decided to walk into the building and imitate their posture, by immediately looking up. I guess I started to see what they saw. A pause trickled over me. Perhaps, time started to slow, and myself, in relation to it. A thought soared into me of a time someone, I don’t remember who, or maybe I had read it in a book, asked “Which do you think is more beautiful, the sky or your phone?”

I thought it was such a silly question, “Of course the sky!”

But then they replied, “Which do you look at more?”

Yes, in some ways this could be looked at as some futile argument about how we’ve become tech-obsessed, but that’s not the way I received it. Also, I’m not interested in those arguments. Instead, it left me with a different understanding. I asked myself, why don’t I look at the sky more?

So, I started penciling in time just to look at the sky. And I think what I’ve come to understand is that I'm always looking for answers and I want to make sure that they reach me. And my phone is such an obvious indicator of the ways your life can change. It’s the center of where things come to you. And somewhere in this process, I devoted myself to using the most obvious tool of communication to receive how my life will change. Always looking down. In the moments I look at the sky I invite another feeling forward. Unknowingness, but a devotion to it.

And it’s kind of like when I’m going down on someone, or they’re going down on me, and somewhere we invite some kind of godliness. A type of looking up at the altar to which you will receive. And to me, god means nothingness, or everything. I don’t know what I’m trying to tell you, lately it’s been hard to accept that maybe I don’t have anything worthy to say. The worth doesn’t present itself beforehand. I just have to do, for the sake of doing, and hopefully, something worthy shows up then. I wonder if the doing is enough for me.

Has it been enough for anyone?

And why do some people need so little to live? Why aren’t they interrupted by the sky? How can they go home and not be perplexed or haunted or struck by it?

The sky is so large, what a mess. It’s just everywhere. It’s all these different colors and it’s present in everything. I’m inhaling the sky right now, just as my lungs spit it back out, then beg for even more. I just want to prove to you I’m worth something, but I’m realizing more and more, maybe I’m not talking about you.

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