Under the Stars

I’ve been looking at the stars a lot lately. I go out of my house at 12:30 and just walk around the street for a few minutes, and I look up.

I’m not going to go into the clichés of “we’re all looking at the same stars” or “Napoleon looked at those stars” and all of that. I’m not going to get into the “Joe Dirt” philosophy of how comforting it is to know that the one you care about or are thinking about may be looking at the moon at the same time.

But stars comfort me. There’s something about the Cape Cod sky at night – with the rest of the atmosphere – that gets into me and takes me to a surreal place, a place that I can barely scrape against duplication with a successful meditation session – of which I have had very few in the last 13 months.

I walk outside and I look up, and the sky is completely dark. One deep breath, and the salt air gets in my nose and in my lungs and I feel free. That smell – it’s the best thing about coming to the Cape. It almost makes it worth leaving, because that first breath of salt air when getting out of the car after the drive over the bridge is like receiving CPR with the breath of the gods. And when a light breeze is coming off the water, it’s like you’re the king of the world.

And with every breath, the sky brightens. With every blink comes more stars. They seem to appear – like magic – with every passing second of looking up. In less than five minutes, the sky goes from all black to mostly white of all shades. It’s hard to look away. And for me, it’s hard to go to sleep knowing this amazing show is happening right above me.

That’s why 4 in the morning is my favorite time of day. The only thing better is a snow storm, where the snow dances in and out of the lights, disappearing and reappearing.

I’m relaxed just writing about it. So rather than going into what I was going to go into, about how the Cape Cod sky is like human beings – you think you see one thing, and the more you look, the more that shows up. That every time you meet someone, blink a few times. That people know this, and unlike the stars, when people realize that they’re being seen, they try to hide themselves, so you need to know when to look away…but I’m not going to go into that stuff…

Well – any more than that…

I’ll cut it off before I get into something away from what I wanted to – which is just how much I love to be under the stars, breathing in the salt air. That there is some greater force in the universe, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s the universe itself. Breathe deeply and look up, and you’ll have little choice but to agree.