Imagine the prettiest thing you've ever seen. Now make it glow.

I saw this and had the strangest flashback. A few years ago when I was melting brain cells with LSD and Ecstacy, I was a regular at a few dance/trance clubs where I become something of an entertainer. I used to hang out in the chill out rooms and relax people with my contact juggling skills. As I slowly got to know the regulars I was introduced to a group of incredible psychedelic girls who dressed in migraine inducing fluorescent clothes and took enough drugs to wipe out a small army, these were the glow chicks.

To cut a very long story short,

Natalie was the prettiest thing I ever saw...

And she glowed.

Jonathon's eyes.

The first time I looked into them, they were blue. crysalline and pure. The clearest lake I've ever seen.

I almost fell in

The second time I looked at them, they had hints of green in them. Like spring. The first brave shoots of grass grow up through patches of ice and snow.

Sometimes I fancy they are purple. When we joke, and truth comes in. When some one says something a little too close to home. When you compliment him. He smiles and looks at you. He then looks away. Sometimes he'll pull his hooded sweatshirt down over his face to hide his eyes. That's when they are purple.

They are strong. I freaked out and couldn't handle being in school anymore. He looked me in the eye and talked me down from my ledge.

They are soft. When he teases or plays a game.


They glow. With happiness. With thunder. When he's screaming a perfect sonnet on the top of his lungs. When he's giggling.

When he's drunk and dancing.

They astound me.

We had only one mantra, only one mission. We worked holidays, weekends, second-shift; we worked inner-cities and national parks, sliding scales and short-term contracts.

We were a group, a Team, a Unit, and I was Unit Head, Team Leader, Middle Management. I knew the suppliers, and I knew those who we were to supply. It was a service job.

We did your neighbor's 1980 Monte Carlo Convertable, your best friend's customized Bianchi. We did your neighbor, and your best friend's girlfriend, glistening gold under high pressure sodium streetlights. We did sunset in the Badlands. We did cliffs and jutting rocks on US-16 west of Buffalo, WY.

It was a service job: accentuating the natural beauty while integrating it with the rest of our world.

It was a service job: accelerating the natural trend, creating one moment of great beauty in an effort to leave less for the next generation to miss.

It was hazard pay and overtime, missing fingers, missing friends, mistakes. It was unmarked white 4x4s and time-delay rapid-release radiation saturation. It was a good old time.