Sitting outside at quarter to ten

I was sitting outside on the porch tonight. Orion is kind of on the horizon these days and it was right in the line of my sight. It's been a long time since I've looked at the stars. I know they're there, I've seen them before and I rarely think to just sit and look at them. I mean, I didn't tonight, I just happened to be because I was outside smoking, a fact which I debated including, but who are we kidding? Who just goes outside and sits there? I couldn't tell the story without that fact to make it believable. So anyway, I was sitting there, cigarette in hand, looking at the sky. Does it seem to anyone else like the stars are twinkling more these days? Tonight they were just really, like, flashing. Maybe it's something to do with the nearby nuclear plant, or 2012.

I guess I'm in a thoughtful mood, which I get embarrassed about because I don't want anyone to think that I'm trying to be profound or overly dramatic, especially about something as poetic as stars, but it really is hard to look at them for any length of time without thinking. I mean, everyone will have a different take on the stars. For me, I like to read a lot of a) history books and b) science books - easy ones, I don't really know that much about either subject. So I was sitting there thinking about the light from those stars travelling millions of light years through space to reach MY eyes. All those years and across unimaginable distance, there were those little photons of light destined to meet my eyes, they were mine all along - out in space, struggling through our atmosphere, down from the sky, to my porch, my eyes, and my brain to make them real (I mean, if we're not here to be monitors for reality, what is reality? Am I right?). It's unthinkable, incredible. For another thing those stars have been there, just overseeing, all that history I love. The Great Pyramids were built to line up exactly with the stars in Orion's belt, that one just a little offset from the other two. That means that when I'm looking at those stars, I'm looking at the very thing that inspired the minds that built the pyramids thousands of years ago. Einstein looked at the stars, DaVinci, Jesus Christ himself must have looked at the stars, and they're there for me to look at too.

Walking in from outside I was thinking about all these things, and about this big oak tree that looked really pretty in the light from the porch and then I looked at the cabinets. I've never thought about them before, and may never again, but they're just these boxes attached to the wall. They were a thought in the mind of a man who tired of piling his dishes on a table. My cabinets aren't bad, not really nice ones, but not terrible. They're simple, functional. The whole house is that way. I really can't tell you the last time I looked at the stars, but I look at the house every day. I look at the house so much that I forget about the stars. And I guess it was kind of nice to remember that they're there, they and all their implications, and I decided that I would just write about it really quickly to remind you too. And then I thought I might draw a picture of the oak tree for Mom. I probably won't do that, I haven't drawn in years, plus it's getting late... It's getting dark earlier now. Go look at the stars.