Rust and Stardust

There is lightening tonight.  In the sky and in my head.  Flashes of electricity that briefly illuminate the darkness, and gives the smallest glimpse of things previously unseen.

And spark the night.

I got to spend time today with someone very dear to me.  We spoke of love, and fear, and the story we will tell together. We began what I hope will be the start of something fun.  Something new.  We will write a play together, and today we opened the door to what that may be. 

We spoke of love.  The love we have in this world, and the love that will exist in this world we create together.  We shared our thoughts and where we are, and what we want, and my heart leapt for her, because she has it, and is in it, and it scares her, and she's doing it anyway.

And today I got to witness bravery and joy. 

I shared with her some of my thoughts as well.  Where I am...not having it, or in it, and what it would take to make that happen, and why don't anticipate that it will.

She only got to witness the cynicism of a stone heart.

I win.

And from these two very different places in life, we will come together and write a play.  I look forward to that.

And in the sky tonight there is lightening.
And rain.

I like the rain.  Little drops of water.  Four billion years ago there was rain falling in this exact spot, on a planet that looked so much different, and in that water, life.

I don't know why my brain goes to the places it goes, but I follow along.

I think about numbers.  Prime and perfect.  I think about scale of probability, and scale of value. 

I think of a universe exploding into existence thirteen billion years ago, and I can't imagine a time so vast.

And nine billion years later...nine...billion...years as we understand them, (which in universal relation is meaningless, and is given meaning only by our understanding that a year is the amount of time ((another construct)) it takes for the the earth to make one revolution around the sun) our solar system was born.

We mark a year according to our sun. We count time further back than the existence of the thing by which we mark it. 

Then this earth went ahead being a rock in space for 4.4, of the 4.5 billion years...without us on it.

I mean seriously...shit happened. 

Multiple extinction events, before anything even resembling us came along.

And we're so impressed with our significance.

So we build because we can.

And we convince ourselves that it matters.

And so it does.

And the rain hits my face.

13 billion years ago, on an invented timeline, reality became real.  4.5 billion years ago, our little blue green space ship was constructed.
100 million years ago, our ancestors became passengers, and almost immediately began fighting over who gets to sit in first class.

And started a long tradition of not sharing.

And since no one really remembered how they got there, they started making up stories to explain it, then killing each other in defence of those stories.

We've been doing that ever since.

That 13 billion year old universe, and that 4.5 billion year old planet, and all of the mysteries know and unknown contained therein, don't care a bit about those pesky little monkeys who've been around for a cosmic microsecond, but....

Goddamn if we don't believe we're the center of it all.
And goddamn if we don't have to kill all the people who pray to different myths than we do.
And goddamn if we don't have to do every thing imaginable to this blue green spaceship, in order to better kill one another and collect more green paper.

And then after all those billions of years, numbers so vast I can't even fathom them, some few yesterdays ago, I got my ticket to ride this rock.

I learned the myths, and heard the stories of the good guys and bad guys.  I was introduced to green pieces of paper, and various ways to accumulate it.  I was told about all the various kinds of different passengers on the spaceship. A few times I attempted to find someone willing to ride along with me...but...in that...

Discovered I am prime.  Divisible only by myself, and like those various numbers scattered in that universal language, content to contribute to the sequence, but forced by my own nature, into singularity.

However unlike those little symbols, I am aware. 
I have the knowledge of both what I lack, and what I am capable of.

This spaceship, and all of the passengers aboard, fascinate me to no end, and it is in that, that I have become a collector of words, and stories, and an inherent need to give them back again.  

And in there lies my joy.  My heart.  In there I can hide the parts of me I'm unable to share with other humans. In there I find secrets left behind by others. In there I can make sense of what it all might...

The rain and the lightening in the sky are gone, leaving only remnants in my head and on my face. 

I visit the ghosts of those who haunt me.  I tell my tales to the wind.  I converse with the old lady, and the fat man, who have lived in my inside and upstairs for as long as I can remember,

And her.  My her.  My captive woman in white, who breaks my heart every day, and tells me the things I don't want to hear, because they are true, and she is right.

Goodnight spaceship.  Goodnight you passengers on it and in it.

Remember for the small moment, that we are rust and stardust.