To keep your heart from freezing
To push on 'til the end.

David Gray, "My Oh My"
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There exists a time in a night of revelry, when surrounded by your friends, when clarity exists above all. This moment of lucidity is brief, often unnoticeable, but is wise in and of itself, is self-aware, and breathes. This moment is nameless, touchless, has vision and memory, and it arrives, looks around, and then leaves. This is the temporary nature of Lucidity. I illuminate and then I am on my way.

It's what I look for when people let their guard down and relax, become vulnerable not physically or psychologically, but vulnerable to speak their mind without the normal checks and balances of discretion. How does truth reveal itself? Sometimes it is manifested in a secret. Perhaps a long-hidden crush. Perhaps a confession. Maybe truth is pointing out what everyone else in the room knows but you. Truth hurts that way, because it insulted your ability to recognize itself.

Jason reached over to catch his falling bottle of Old English, and in doing so ended up knocking over a smaller bottle of beer onto Stanley's felt table. The standard cries of "Party Foul!" ring through the air. This is not the moment. Lucidity peeks in and out of rooms like children eavesdropping.

Sam was well behind in the hand in which his opponent had gone all in. He needed to catch a 7 on the river in order to split the pot, otherwise he would be down big. The drama was thick like drama, and when the 7 overturned, Sam jumped in jubilation and punched a hole in Stanley's wall. This is not the moment. Lucidity can bear the brunt of emotion, can survive the ebbs and flows of a tidal, mercurial night.

I am the dealer, and I had been giving Thomas a hard time all night for not mixing up his play, for always playing the same way and thus allowing others to bet accordingly. I did so again right before action arrived to him. Thomas gives a stage sigh and checks, to which I announce to all its obvious fakeness. This is not the moment. This isn't even a moment. It's just me being a smug jerk.

No, the moment I liked was when we passed around names like a football in a park. Men among men speak of women like posters, like jars in the cupboard, to be looked at, to be reached, to be opened when hungry. This is the nature of men among men, and my moment of lucidity happened when a certain name was mentioned, and I looked at his face and his expression bowed. In it, in the lines of sorrow or anger or meticulous hate, was the struggle to keep face, to maintain composure, to restore the evening to its original bright and luminous clarity. A new name was mentioned and the night forgave itself. Lucidity opened the door, took a look around, and left.