We’re leaving the Great Park.

It’s a scorcher out there.

Her team just lost six to one.

She’s quiet on the tortuous zag from the fields.

I don’t think she feels responsible.

At 17, she’s philosophical, albeit a touch cynical and weary.

She carries her angst in her pocket.

“What is nihilism?” She asks the road ahead after a while.

“Lately, I’ve been thinking about how minuscule

we are, especially in light of the cosmos and

the improbable non-existence of other life, somewhere.”

I haven’t hydrated enough.

My head hurts slightly.

“Well, it’s sort of like nothing matters,

an extreme sort of skepticism,” I immediately regret saying.

Her eyes widen and the depths of velvet brown

endlessly recede, raw terror swallowed–stored in a gap.

“But it’s not just the life’s a bitch then you die philosophy.

There’s something freeing about understanding our

insignificance in the larger scheme of things and our utter

significance at the local level, where we live.

It doesn’t have to be about uselessness.

The randomness and chaos of our births and deaths–

some take comfort in the just-is-ness of it.”

She still stares out at the road ahead of us, but I hear

her thinking it over, this great question of being and nothing,

all tied in knots to her senior year of high school,

turning 18, the possibility, potential, and unknown…

she who has always tightroped the anxiety fine line.

At 65 mph, those last 5 minutes take us no closer to home.