Reading Someone Else's Thoughts is like Rolling the Dice

Kerouac:

I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.

Kessler:

I woke up in the middle of the night and went outside to pee. I was only wearing underwear and expected it to be cold. As a child I always associated the night with a chill. I would rest in my bed and stay indoors where it was comfortable and safe and quiet, sheltered from true and natural things in this world. Oblivious to the patterned chaos that unfolded while I dreamed.

Now as I aimlessly pee on the open lawn, hearing the waves against the cliff like an endless orchestra and the nocturnal animals sharing secrets in thick grass, I stand corrected that a night in May on Maui's North Shore is not cold. And I realize now, the same goes for most nights besides ones spent outside in winter, at high altitudes, or in regions far from the equator.

The night is comfortable. The wind is strong. The moon is two days from full. The brandy, by now, is swirling around my belly and I did not drink enough to make my head pound.

As I sit down outside, I wonder what else has changed, though some is the world spinning, it is more myself growing. We are raised on ideas and principles of the previous generation. We are influenced by our peers, our landscape, our family, our teachers. We are meant to believe that some cultures are better at developing certain qualities in a person. An American child born in the twenties is different than an Italian born in the twenties. Just as a Japanese child is born in the thirties is different than a Japanese child born in the fifties. Our human and physical landscape define us. And there is no escaping that.

I've tried to discern how I truly feel about a person or a place by traveling and attaining multiple perspectives. I've talked and been engaged with people on many different walks of life. I've done a lot of listening and some growing and some shrinking and teased myself with understanding, but that just leads to more questions.

I can go outside now, and feel the night is not cold. Has it always been this way?