For all the Starving Eyes to See

I can't think straight lately. I've been losing my shoes and taking my dog for walks and cutting my hair with Mom's scrap-booking scissors, and I've been doing other things, too; I just don't remember what they are. I try to write things down, but words seem so insufficient.

They only catch so much, and so many real feelings and concepts fall through the cracks undefined that how can we know anything about ourselves, let alone each other? Give something a name and it is real, solid. But the inexplicable is dismissed just because there are no words to anchor it and so it floats away.

Balloons.

No, at least balloons are something; have some substance.

Warm air, maybe. Puffs of warm wind. Brief, invisible, insubstantial but you still feel it and for a moment it engulfs you completely. Then it is gone, as if it had never been. Language is so limiting.

I'm tired, and I think I'm over-thinking, putting so many words—or trying to—to whatever is in me that I lose it; lose what it really is until I don't know anything anymore.

Can't anything just be what it is? Why does everything seem to require such analysis and subsequent documentation?


Like the meteor shower the other night; the annual fiery Tears of St.Lawrence, hurled across the sky by Perseus. I saw twenty-seven of them, those brightly-broken chunks of Swift-Tuttle. It was surreal, almost cartoon-like,the way a point of light would sail straight across a section of sky. A few left burning trails across the black, but the lines behind some of the smaller ones were so faint that I can't be completely sure I didn't imagine them.


Sometimes the intervals between meteors were long, and my eyes grew tired and sore in all my probing amongst the stars. They went still and unfocused as my mind wandered, and vaguely I forgot why I couldn't just close my eyes and rest.

But then, No. Swiftly, like a sudden convulsion, I shook my head and rubbed my eyes. No, I can't forget what I'm looking for. Not now...and not ever.


I might be weary and stiff; sore and losing focus and even starting to lose hope that I might ever see another streak of light, but until my ragged consciousness can no longer cling to wakefulness...I can't forget what I'm looking for.

And besides, there was beauty to be seen between meteors; infinite glittering, suspended stars and Venus in the south-eastern sky.


And I talked to God some, feebly tossing my tired voice into the atmosphere, where it mingled with the distant sounds of coyotes' primitive songs in strange harmony with the arrogant barks of farmers' dogs.

I told Him that I think I spend too much time looking at little things, at simple things like TV when two steps out my door there is a vast scope for intrigue and beauty.

I said, I think I do that because I know I can't grasp the full grandeur of the starry sky or silk-square pastures or thick-thatched woods full of little creatures, and so I'm afraid to even try to see them.

I comprehend them just enough to know that they are wonderfully complex and majestic and pull from me some primitive feeling of reverence and ceremony; and I comprehend them just enough to know that they are far more beautiful and far more grand than I could ever understand.

And that if I did, I would fall weeping in the dirt in sheer wonder, run through the fields and swim in the lake and climb the trees; jump off the edge of the Grand Canyon or or drown myself in the ocean just to be enveloped. Just to be submerged in the heartbreaking loveliness of it all.



I look at the TV instead, because I'm ashamed to gaze in what awe I may when I know that if I only understood, I would see and it would change my life completely. But I don't understand and it makes me so sad, to know something's missing in me.



I look at the cheap instead of the priceless; I look at me instead of You.

And I'm so, so sorry.



Two of the larger meteors I saw came at perfect times, punctuating certain thoughts, as if in tangible answer. I won't write them, those thoughts; they're just for me. Not because they were at all scandalous—really they were very mundane—but because I need to keep some things sacred and secret, whether or not they are of that nature.

Maybe it was coincidence, the way the meteors fell when they did, but I need to believe it was my God. I do believe it.

It may be stereotypical—everyone in the world has been stirred by the stars—but the tears felt good in my eyes as I smiled.

I counted the little lights as they fell and for once tried to revel in the simplicity of what is, now. Nothing had changed in my life; no problems were solved, nothing was magically "better". But, how could I not be happy when it is raining stars?

Besides, it was now and I was here and so was the grass and the sky and gravity, and I figured that had to count for something—even if my mind could not wrap itself around the reality.

For a moment I thought maybe having someone there to share it with would help make it real; make it true, prove to myself that this isn't a dream and that it really is. But, no, I don't think another human wouldn't have helped. I think nothing can reinforce things like this. My words can't; I've just been writing and writing and still this is just another star-story penned by just another hopeless romantic. But oh, it felt like so much more.

I think that these moments—these sights—are not meant to be held over or saved. Paint a picture of this, try to describe, and it is cheapened some. Like fireflies, put them in a jar and soon they'll dry up.

But as a child, that didn't stop me from catching as many fireflies as I could. And as a young adult, it won't keep me from desperately grasping to capture these things in words. And failing.


Except maybe to say that I thought, I want to be here until I die; until I am dust and no longer have any eyes at all to see these things.