Once I Browsed

Consider the contrast between these two journal entries:

May 18, 2004
I do not remember exactly when my fixation with twilight began. The waning light of day and the lowered tone of the wind have such cathartic effects on me. It is perhaps my brooding nature and melancholic proclivities that find an affinity with this time of day, when everything mellows down to a quietness which calms even the most fiery of souls. The equilibrium between light and dark fills me with a sense of reflection. Dusk finds me in my most pensive state.

July 20, 2005
The rain is falling and it is awfully dark outside. It’s two fortyin the afternoon and yet it seems like twilight. There is a congruence to the words twilight and gloom.
Loneliness is a terrible thing. It makes the soul shrink unto itself, like there’s nowhere else to go except inwards, and one does not know what one will find there. Lonely. There is a sense of finality in the letters, as if there is nothing in between them, not even shadows. Just nothing.
Nothing.
The word sadness is altogether different. It seems incredibly mundane, when placed beside loneliness. Sadness is something temporary, like a thunderstorm on a summer’s day; one is sure it will go away, even as one basks in the middle of it.
But loneliness. It is twilight, and then the darkness that comes after twilight. It goes away, but is certain to come back. Daylight obscures it, but only for so long.
It is part of, if not the, landscape.
Loneliness, I have to confess, has become one of my favorite words.