Ten Thousand Stars
Blankets and contradictions
I am tonight. I lay here, awash in the light of ten thousand stars, coated in and made of the stuff of that light. A singularity in all of creation, beside the dark water and warmed by the heat of celestial bodies.
My mind is never quiet. Tonight is no different—but it is focused. Focused on what is real and in front of me. A tender soul, wild and weird and challenging sometimes. But here in the dark and the cold she is a porcelain nymph carved from the starlight.
We whisper thanks to the stars for the harbor we can give one another in a tempestuous life. There have been many moments when the quiet was absent and longed for. Tonight, we make up for the long losses. The dark lake is calm enough for the soul to speak without stuttering.
All the world is a stage and we tonight are not the star-crossed lovers exactly. Star-adjacent being more apropos. But on the stage we are, before the audience of celestial witnesses spread out like a gauze overhead, the respiration of the universe.
The miles-wide mirror surface of Buffalo Reservoir stretched out before me. A lake holding all of the sky, a whole universe captured in perfect perpetuity. The sky’s way of letting itself be touched by the hands of a simple man.
Cold wind combs through my fur, lifting something wild beneath the ribs—that old, familiar electricity that says you are alive, you are animal, you are wonder.
I am finally Alex Rogan, Marty McFly, and Brand, here, with my girl, by the lake. It occurs to me this moment is a fantasy long denied many through our modern myths.
We say hushed stories of our life. People and places and moments lost. Some souls we hope for again.
It is sweet and wonderful.
Falling stars burned in her eyes—and I feel seen by her for the first time in a long time. The lack of her distraction, or perhaps it is my absolute presence. It is refreshing.
We laughed in the dark with our feet tugging at the blankets to keep them warm, listening to the small splashes out on the black water— I think it may be the Watcher in the Water that stands guard over the doors to Moria, where one must speak 'Friend' to gain access—but no, likely the carp, wind-driven waves slapping the rocks — or maybe the quiet applause of the universe, our audience for tonight's naked performance. Approving our moment of being.
At some point, I looked up and the sky is changed.
What was at first an overwhelming gallery of jewels now feels like a painting of immense beauty. Over the course of the hours we first see a stunning streak across the sky that lasts for nearly five seconds. It must have been a massive hulk of some cast-off rupture ten million years ago. Finally going to it's end over our beautiful bodies.
Meteors punctuate the art for hours, two, three—seven in total. All diving in from the eastern sky. A message? Or just the way our world turns in the universe? The last meteor of the night will juxtapose by diving in from south to north. A lonely traveler who finally found home. Omen—or reminder the way a man's heart may walk in many directions at once without having been asked.
Stories.
The mind doesn’t always care for literal things. It cares for symbols, and symbols have teeth.
The truth is simple, and dangerous:
a man can be wrapped in warmth and love and memory and still feel a second sun rising somewhere far off. I wish it weren’t so. I wish I were simpler.
But wishing has never been my strength.
Feeling is.
Universe Rising
The green light across the water blinked— a buoy or a tower or something mundane— but it pulsed like a heartbeat from another life.
Another place.
Another soul.
Quiet signal I shouldn’t have seen, but the heart is an antenna for trouble. And here is where honesty matters: I was there in my body, in my marriage, present, loving, alive.
But the mind has a way of opening doors that no one else can see, doors that lead to memory, longing, and the ghost-soft possibility of something forbidden yet still tender.
It is like standing in two worlds at once— one hand in the warmth of what is, one eye stolen by the shimmer of what almost was or could never be or should never be, yet glows anyway.
This all occurs to me while I cradle her and listen to the soft buzz of her dream sleep. The wind and lovemaking have put her whole being at ease, and she slips into a deep rest. It is so complete, she soon serenades me into slumber.
I begin to have strange dreams where the meteors do not pulse into dust, but slow and land quietly around us. A modern, astral Stonehenge geometrically arranged to amplify my signals to God. And the flow out of me like a stream of golden glitter: petitions, and thanks, complaints, wants, wishes, wonders and rambling passions. I pour out my heart and mind until my tears themselves become part of the stream into the heavens—defying gravity and reality in a desperate attempt to connect with my Creator. To find comfort for my trembling being.
The answer comes in fishes that fly from the inky starlight surface of the lake and come to kiss my face and cover my body where the blankets have slipped away to leave me exposed to the cosmos.
In a voice like the brush of a fin against my cheek, the fish whisper in my ear, “You are not broken. You are divided, division is not a sin. Love does not demand simplicity. Men only pretend it does. Do good. Do no harm. You will be loved.”
Atoms swirl, galaxies fold over on themselves and all of creation comes to witness us collapsed in repose.
In the darkest, quietest hour of the night, the wind rises and finds the chinks in my polyester and cotton armors. The fish have done what they can, but the wind pulls me gently back from my slumber.
Gone are the kind aerial fish. Absent are the stone antennae. The perfect mirror of the lake is blurred, the stars smeared into streaks of silver, and it feels as though the sky itself is trembling.
Standing to confront the night and the wind and the cold and my whole damned life, my heart shouts at the heavens for peace, for calm, for love. My body takes the answer in a coaxing and massage of the cold wind on my fur. It is less beautiful and elegant than my dream state. My tears are able to follow my prayers into the sky. And the sentiments no less honest and bare.
Contradictions.
I try to understand how a man can love two stars without splitting himself apart. Becoming space dust entering the atmosphere with predictable results.
The answer, if there is one, does not arrive this night.
But something else in its place: a moment of grace in the confusion. A soft acknowledgment that desire—real desire—is rarely tidy.
It isn’t polite, does not wait for clean edges or perfect timing.
It just rises, like wind at a glassy lake, and asks to be felt.
And maybe that’s all this night was: a reminder that I am still alive, still capable of awe, still capable of contradiction, still capable of longing so fierce and bewildering it carves its initials in the center of my chest.
Making love by the water is not for answers. But to give comfort and bind two souls closer together. That is enough.
I see my reflection—not in the water, but in the gossamer light of existence: the light, the shadow, the pull— and for one rare moment, I do not turn away.
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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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