As I type I sit on my roof, laptop perched atop my lap in one of the few instances it's lived up to its name.
Above me is a clear night sky, as unblemished as baby's skin. Beside me sits a cat. She purrs loudly. I see right through her ruse. She wants food. A bowl of kitty crunchies could turn the most faithful feline into a stonehearted deceiver. Two feet away from me is my open window. On the other side of that window sits my all the stuff--clothes, books, CDs--that identify me as me. My phone sits in there as well. I'm done talking on it.
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light
A fitting way to describe the scene above my head, albeit not original to me. I'm surrounded by large crowds of crickets making cricket noises. I interpret their noise as ordered, intricate cricket music.
This idyllic scene is marred by the newly opened can of Dr. Pepper sitting on the windowsill, a testament to ubiquity of consumerism. I close my eyes and push the can farther into the shadows so as not to ruin the moment.
You could compare the stars to diamonds against a backdrop of black velvet, or you could compare them to the metal rivets in the black leather trousers of an 80s metal guitarist. I guess it depends on whether you want to create gravitas or comedy.
Tonight I'm leaning more toward gravitas. It seems more fitting. Generally we stare up at the stars because we want to see greatness, magnitude, eternality, just something bigger than ourselves and the things we made. So I ignore the soda can and the vinyl siding on the house and the neighbor's telephone wires and the dull glow that hovers around the night sky from the several hundred thousand lights of the town.
If you have an imagination, or if you are a hallucinogenic substance abuser, or if you're just desperate for guidance, you can look up and see all sorts of patterns in the stars. You can find warriors, mythical beasts, various carnivorous or herbivorous mammals, and even kitchen utensils. All human constructs, of course, but quite useful. And if you just so happen to be adrift in the middle of the Atlantic without rudder or compass, you might be able to get some idea of where you are or where to go just by looking at your friendly star formation. Now the stars, by themselves, don't really say much. They just stare back at you mutely, a sort of astrophysical mime act. They are...(pardon me if I'm an eager beaver about using a cool word I don't get to use often) taciturn in their reserve. Taciturn. Try using that word sometime. The stars don't say a thing. But if you use your creative powers you can turn them into a bull, a lass, or even a set of non-conjoined twins. You see what you want to see and then you can milk the system to get all the guidance you want ouf of a few stars strewn randomly across the blackness. Use your creative powers. Do what you gotta do to stay sane.
The only constellation I readily notice every night is Orion. I am assuming this familiarity will help me during some future dire scenario.
Posted by: Brade at May 26, 2006 01:23 PMIf you get lost look heavenward. Orion will be right there.
I've decided to make up my own constellations. I've always wodnered how astronomers can look at a pattern of 5 or 6 stars and discern the outline an entire creature. If they can do it I can too. So far I've spotted a dachsund, a tapeworm, and a clown.
Posted by: sligh at May 27, 2006 12:32 AMI look for Orion most evenings I am out and enjoy something about its constancy, maybe even the correlation that our Saviour created it and it bears His likeness of constancy and faithfulness.
Although, creating cloud shapes while lying on the cool grass is a rather fun event as well. Those cotton ball-like figures can morph into anything in just seconds. Once I saw a fire-breathing dragon! =)
i enjoy the fact that the can of dr. pepper ruined your "view," yet the laptop didn't.
Posted by: caffinated star*gazer at May 31, 2006 11:18 PMThe laptop was an impartial observer, studiously recording everything that took place. It was necessary to have it there lest the moment go unrecorded. I just sort of pretended I didn't see it.
Posted by: sligh at June 1, 2006 11:21 AMFrom Robert Frost:
O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud-
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says "I burn."
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.
It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.
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