Starwalk
We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.
Part I: Shadow Stroll
I walk at midnight—a contemplative wanderer in a neighborhood long since surrendered to sleep or the anesthetic glow of blue-lit screens. It’s a Wednesday night that has quietly become Thursday morning. The air is thick with summer heat, but a stiff breeze stirs the trees and brushes the sweat from my skin like an invisible hand.
I peel my shirt away, let the breeze massage my chest and back, and laugh to myself—nearly tempted to stroll in the emperor’s new clothes. But I remember the unblinking eyes of video doorbells with night vision. Exhibitionism, it turns out, is only noble in the absence of surveillance.
Still, I am the emperor of this night. The treetops sway above me, alive and whispering like a hidden audience cheering my procession. The stars flicker wildly tonight—the disturbed atmosphere making their signals feel urgent. And then I spot it: the Big Dipper. Its seven ancient points shine down on me, each photon between 80 and 100 years old.
A small knot catches in my chest.
The light I see now as these photos strike my rods and cones was born when Fitzgerald first published Gatsby. And the light born in this instant, out there in that invisible forge of fusion, won’t reach this world until I am 153—if I am here to see it at all.
That thought makes me lie down.
The concrete is coarse against my back, sun-warmed and radiating heat long after the source is gone. The bones of this street have absorbed another brutal day. No wonder our cities are heat sinks—our past century has paved the earth in stone and steel, and we wonder why the air won’t cool.
Breathing slows. Thought slows.
Part II: Astral Departure
And I begin to lift—first inward, then upward. My body becomes a ghost, a specter of will and thought alone. I float above the trees, tingling and glowing, supercharged by some cosmic hum. Untethered by mass or physics, I shoot into the night sky and circle a 500-foot radio tower, its pulsing red lights painting me like a fire-wreathed phantom.
The world below seems carved from shadow and silence, stitched together by dim porch lamps and the far-off blink of traffic signals. My body, left behind, is a forgotten anchor. I am a will without weight, a notion made flight.
Above a thousand feet, I spot the red and green beacons of NATO training jets. I dart beside them like a dolphin pacing a ship, laughing in the silent void. But I grow bored quickly—it turns out, spectral speed can be disorienting. So I test the limits.
At the speed of light, I reach the western edge of the continent in an instant. But it's too fast. There's no thrill in pure velocity. On my return, I slow to a quarter of the speed of sound—twenty seconds of joy. Then eastward, slower still. It takes minutes to reach a familiar town in North Carolina. Time enough to savor flight.
Part III: Dreamworlds and Ether-Homes
I visit a quiet home—lights low, its inhabitants asleep, unaware of the visitor hovering outside. I sit in a familiar chair on a brick patio and admire the stars from here. I smile that my friends are so close, though now is not the time for a visit. In the past, even a midnight waking would be welcome. These days, distance is our friend. Time and love will repair this. And so I cannot stay, though I wish to.
My path becomes increasingly dreamlike, bending in logic. I spiral around mountain peaks that shouldn't be there, fly through violet clouds pulsing with soft music, and slip between overlapping layers of night that shimmer like veils. I ride moonbeams down to alpine lakes that reflect stars too bright to name, and dive into fog that tastes like memory.
There are floating cities made of amber and wind, and I pass through them like breath through a reed. Voices echo in languages I feel rather than understand. I see silhouettes dancing in towers suspended by lightning. Somewhere a bell tolls, but the sound arrives like color.
I drift back toward the eastern sea. I am looking for a familiar place I have been before, but settle on a desolate stretch where solid and liquid try to co-exist.
On a quiet beach, phosphorescent algae and starlight shimmer over sand. I sit in that soft-glowing dark, knees tucked to chest, breathing deep the salted air. The roar of the ocean never stops, only changes intensity. It feels like prayer.
I watch little transparent crabs scurry sideways, predators of the night, unaware that the violet-blue shimmer watching them is a human body stretched out hundreds of miles away.
I smile.
We are not so different—we chase safety and longing and small satisfactions, blind to how close we walk beside wonders.
I stop time. I build a home.
Ten years I spend on this beach, raising a great house on piers. Wide open rooms, handmade furniture, crystal-clear windows to the sea. When it is finished, I discover I can summon others—my circle of loved ones—into this ether realm. We gather for a dinner party on the shore. For days we laugh, feast, swim, share stories under the moon. There are bonfires and dancing. There is joy. There is sorrow. There is no rush.
But even this must end.
One by one, my guests return to their lives, each promising, “We’ll do this again soon.”
And one remains longest. Her presence is my quiet joy. We speak in whispers, in glances. We delay our goodbye like children postponing bedtime. And as I embrace her with a tight squeeze— absorbing a scent of spice and moonlight— then my dream collapses like a wave drawn back into the ocean.
Part IV: Return
I wake. Not realizing I have drifted into hypnagogia.
The ground is still warm. The trees still cheer. But now, I hear their voices in the rustling leaves. And they sing:
Would you love me through the winter
Would you love me 'til I'm dead
I hear you in the eastern sky
Cold and clear as whispered breath.
I smile as I rise, brushing off the bits of concrete embedded in my back. It’s late—late enough that if I linger, I might find myself breakfasting with raccoons and opossums.
Time for a real night’s sleep.
Spectral-me has already laid his head.
#story #dream #essay #travel #osxs #writing #100daystooffset #writing
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Thank you for coming here and walking through the garden of my mind. No day is as brilliant in its moment as it is gilded in memory. Embrace your experience and relish gorgeous recollection.
Into every life a little light will shine. Thank you for being my luminance in whatever capacity you may. Shine on, you brilliant souls!
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