star

     I miss looking at the stars like I could at the Farm. I think it was the connection that I sought by gazing, as opposed to the beauty of the star that it emitted -- and in that, I suppose, I miss rather that I could see the stars in the first place. I miss being so allowed by circumstance to free myself into the sky, and dream awake with the stars and comets. I could have sworn you could see the sharp purple space dust that makes up the faded lilac color of the milky way galaxy dotting a ring around the vertical horizon.

As impossible as the stars are to see from the townhouse in the Industrial district, I can see them nonetheless in the light refracted by the rippled lenses that hug my irises; the street lamps and distant invasive flood lights fold and spring outwards in the same ways that the stars do and did. They allow me to fly not. I am a bird in its cage, sitting in my room with the blind partway drawn, peering through the glass and cold.  

It's really special -- feeling connected -- in ways that only three things can make you feel. First is the raw, familial bond that a connection to nature imbues one with. Recognizing the insignificance of you, as a person, as a living creature, is a frightening and effortful endeavor with not so much a reward as confronting an insurmountable fear would have; but submitting yourself to the endless spring of life and rejoining in cosmic harmony with your brothers in fern and sisters in fawn is a song to be sung only by those attuned enough to appreciate it as it is. Mother nature's embrace is as soothing a touch of any radiant presence may have. 

Second is the ethereal, radiant and resonant connection that is felt on the inside when one of those specific songs comes on, with those sounds that sing the unspeakable, one that allows my soul to pour out of my ears and weep out of my eyes. It's a playful dance of the soul to intermingle with the warm wind, the sweet sea, and the dreams of those long gone and far future-bound. Forgoing the body to escape with the soul is facilitated so kindly and personally by song, special songs only, to the affect of slumbering all who doth lay a similar ear upon its melodies; and song makes a brother or sister of any whom would share it as passionate as the song is easily shared.

Last is the connection that I feel on the radio, late at night, listening to a tired boy tell me why he really likes the song he's about to put on, that connected public message that only a few will ever catch, that desperate careless shout into the night air, that declaration of existence, it screams: I was here, if you can hear me or even care to hear. I was there. I heard, and you heard too -- whether or not you will ever know I heard you, I did -- it's comforting to know, I suppose, that no matter how I scream such in destitute isolation I will be heard, felt, and reciprocated. Alone is a secret kinship of the isolated, shared unknowingly and daringly intense.