2002-08-14 - 9:42 p.m.

Get some perspective.

I'm over a thousand miles from home, lying on my back in a Missouri meadow, staring up at a panoply of stars.

I'm a sack of protoplasm engaging in a thousand thousand processes, keeping alive a teeming colony of a hundred quintillion micro-organisms, which have vast nation-states in my bloodstream, huge continents in my intestines, and are part of that ridiculously complex twitching bit of gassy, squelching clockwork that keeps me staring up at a panoply of stars.

A cow has ceased peacefully chewing the grass and died a short death. Its body was processed into many carefully-wrapped pieces, some of which were ground up and ended up in a recently-eaten lasagna. This was a fairly indifferent ending its rather pleasant life out on a green stretch of farmland, just south of where I lay on dry, crackling grass and dessicated Queen Anne's lace, staring up at a panoply of stars.

I idly place my thumb down on a mosquito which had been feeding on my elbow, noticing only because her carefully-evolved stream of anaesthetic has been worn down by my overeager immune system. She is squelched into a small, unhappy dark smear in the midst of a bead of blood, and I have singlethumbedly ended an entire genetic line, all the while staring up at a panoply of stars.

I am a citizen of what is somewhat arguably the most ridiculously powerful nation in the history of the civilized world, and my shoulders are slumped under the invisible burden of my patria's hubris. I can feel the solid mass of history resting on my chest while I fold my arms behind my head, staring up at a panoply of stars.

I'm spinning around at a breakneck pace, being held down not only by own considerable mass but by invisible strings strummed by a man who died hundreds of years ago. My world goes smoothly careening along an airless void, never hurtling away to smash into a quintillion tons of superdense exploding hydrogen, which is of course what lends the twinkle to my eye as I lay there, staring up at a panoply of stars.

Countless eyes have stared at the same stars I'm gazing into, but we've all pulled different realities out of the meaningless glow. That doesn't stop me from staring up at a panoply of stars.

Jets go blinking by, high in the upper atmosphere, filled with important people going important places. Satellites are faint blips against the rich indigo, drifting like ghosts. Meteors from the Perseid Shower are streaking by in magical showers of sparkles. Three lights fly in intersecting arcs. One light is blazing through the heavens, uncaring of anything save the grace and beauty of entropy, one light is watching over the world with a cold glass eye, and one light is spinning the world in its fingertips but not looking at a damned thing. Theology in the sky. And I'm thrupenny-philosophizing while I'm staring up at a panoply of stars.

I'm clicking my little flashlight on and off at the stars, blanking out the dim ones ... and fireflies see me talking their language, and dance their own dance around me and over my head.

And I'm on my back.

Staring up at a panoply of stars.

- ConstWheelations

*****

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