Celestial Bodies: A Romanticizing of Ancient Light

Stripe, stripe, stripe; Morse in the headlights. “Truly Random Code“, half-dollar, lemon crème moon, Orion’s Belt aligns: Cruelly open road.

12 degrees.

It’s as if the atmosphere falls away at night in the winter. The solstice rolls around and that infinite nothingness plunges it’s fingers into the dirt. Everything’s brighter. The clouds are translucent against the moon rings. I’ll start singing songs about Space, thinking back on summer nights, “Moongod, where’s your glow?” Sometimes I’ll make myself believe that I’m the only one watching those celestial bodies creep slowly through the sky, “Maybe my new friends will invite me out to stay in their Milky Way real estate.”

Alpha Centauri is the closest star to Earth at 4.37 light years, and somehow we can still see it in our sky. We’re consistently observing the past as we look into the sky, seeing light that’s been traveling billions of miles, and we greet it with indifference. I’m always looking down at a light 6 inches from my face, more worried about whether this light shows me a spark or a laugh. We used to worship and marvel at the stars but now that light is in our hands. Hollow, controllable, fragile. Sufjan said that Jupiter was the loneliest planet but I think he was wrong. Earth has inhabitants and they abuse and neglect her constantly. As Jupiter’s great Red Eye swirls about it’s surface humanity is prying the life out of the Earth and pretending she’ll be fine, or forgetting she’s even there. Just a lonely blue speck in a sea of black. “Blue, the most human color.”

Sometimes I’ll make my own constellations, trace the lines of my whims and imagination. I just want to create my own lines, making the sky something new each time. Tootles lost his marbles and so did the rest of us. Not only will we not chase our own dreams, but we’ll go out of our way to make sure others don’t either. I caught a glimpse of a future I wanted, and I played it out like a romance in my head. I’ll take in every moment of an imagined self, smile at how happy that Thomas is, let my heart leap a little. But there’s always reality and others who want to take that glimmer in your eye.

It’s no wonder when I gaze out at the dipper that I pine and brood.

“Look at how small I am.”

And then I feel that loneliness too, somehow paired with connection and understanding.

“I don’t want to be alone, but I don’t want to be infatuated either. I don’t want to be everything to someone or to myself, just something to someone and better than yesterday. I want to be consumed by what I love and not have to worry about having my passion taken away by others. I want to be connected but I want to be alone. People are like constellations, I’ll trace those lines differently each day. I want to be able to admire the constellations I’m not a part of. We’re all just star dust anyways, right?”

Inpiration from A Lot Like Bird’s “Truly Random Code” and “Trace the Lines“, The Devil Wears Parada’s “Moongod“, Salvage My Dream’s “Alpha Centauri”, Sufjan Stevens’ “Planetarium“, and Regina Spektor’s “Blue Lips”