What is it about nighttime fog that fascinates me so?

The peacefulness of the encroaching fog. Enveloping the night in a shroud of mystery. Street lights and headlamps cutting through the dense blindfold. The sense of aloneness, of solitude.

It's like the all-night session in the computer lab, hacking away at some code in a cubicle, completely unaware of one's surroundings, totally immersed in a sea of green letters and numbers and symbols on a black field, suspended in a world of sound comprised only of drum-and-bass mixes. Watching bits fly by on the network wire. Waiting for the compiler to chew through a million lines of code, only to produce a minute speck of a kernel binary image.

It's like driving home from a Friday night football game, still in band uniform. Driving through a sleepy suburb, not a single soul on the road. The city-wide curfew keeps the kids off the streets during the wee hours of the night. The letter jacket is the trophy of three years of toil in the academic trenches, and the colors are worn proudly, but there is no one to admire its bearer.

It's like sitting atop a mountain, the highest peak within 50 miles, overlooking a river that cuts through an affluent neighborhood. To one side the valley opens below, and to the other the city skyline soars high above the rooftops in the distance. Though there are other view-lookers all around, one feels completely alone, at peace with oneself, one's surroundings, and the Earth below. Quietly, thoughts come and go. The Moon and her twinkling entourage make their appearance high overhead.

It's like sneaking into the student center late at night, while the all-nighters use their textbooks and notes for pillows, finding a piano in an empty room at the far corner of the building. Letting the music float up and away from the hammers and strings, wafting gently into the three-story open foyer.

Beneath the night sky, beneath the street lights, beneath the fog, for what seems an eternity, the only thing that exists in the Universe is that which one is.

¶ 11:54 PM