Signs of the Times
Once upon a time, not so long ago, I could see a blanket of stars from my house. Those stars dazzled my pupils, pulling my chin upward and refusing to let it drop back down. I learned to find Orion (or did he find me?), I gasped at my first shooting star, I witnessed the milkiness of the milky Way. I compared paper maps of constellations with the real thing right there glaring down on me. I tried to count, but got lost and dizzy lying in the grass, grounded in the sky above.
Somehow, haze
slowly seeped in over the years, and we didn’t notice that the magic of the
stars was pulling us further and further from our homes. We drove out to the
mountains, out to the desert, out to the ocean, just to get away from the
lights of our own civilization. Just to see the stars again. To escape the
haze, to escape ourselves. We made the stars disappear. We did that.
We lost touch with Orion – we became
distant acquaintances, rather than close friends. An impersonal long-distance
relationship. We forgot which colors corresponded to which planets, and
complained that our necks hurt when we looked up for too long. But those of us
with good memory, camping trips under our belts, and hearts still holding
traces of wonder, never forgot.
Looking up at the
purple-orange haze, imagining the stars that I knew were up there, hidden, I
heard a message. Through the haze, the stars still spoke clearly to inform me
of their purpose:
“Vehicles of
wonder and awe, we are here (even when you can’t see us) to remind you.
Progress has ceased to be progress when it eclipses the stars. Look up, and if
you fail to find us, you know what you must do. Don’t worry, we’ll always come
back, no matter how long you take down there. Look up, and if you find your
pupils dazzled, you know that things must somehow be right.”
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