The Comfort of Pointlessness

by A.M. Fontana

After a particularly rough day at work, I took an evening walk to try and clear my head. Thinking about my boss’s gruff warning that I needed to shape up and pull my weight around there, my girlfriend’s ultimatum regarding more quality time and the bills that were piling up on my desk back home, my eyes wandered up to the sky. In that moment, through wispy clouds, flash, I saw an image of our swirling, churning cosmos, and the void that surrounds it, billions of years in the making. Feeling small, I brought my eyes back down to the tips of the trees, just as one of them let go of a leaf, which slowly, sadly meandered its way down to earth. I froze, then, realizing that in the scheme of things, my life - even if I live to be 110, make a billion dollars, own 17 houses and a Maserati and conquer an entire continent through the sheer force of my will - is probably no more or less significant than the falling of this leaf. A smile formed on my lips and I skipped the rest of the way home.

6S

A.M. Fontana was raised in Michigan and now lives and writes in Southern California. He used to be a rock and roll journalist like that little punk in Almost Famous. He also co-wrote a Los Angeles tour guide and has been published in Pequin, Six Sentences and Microhorror. Outside of the literary world, he works in the legal field.