burst
i just saw the milky way for the first time in my life.
i thought the stars were bright last night but they were only coming in through patches in the cloud cover and tonight it's all clear and the whole upturned bowl of it out there is clear like the ceiling of a planetarium except better, except there's more, and i feel...chastised? shaken. staggered. how arrogant and self-assured i am, as if i've seen enough to know or understand anything just because i've heard a few concepts before, when the universe out there is so vast and beyond understanding and therefore slightly terrifying, at least at first glance, beautiful and terrible and immense and not needing me to wrap my head around it though i know i'll wrap around at least this glimpse and it's silly how i've never been anywhere with this little light pollution (being an immigrant always meant familiarity with opposite sides of the world where most people i meet are only familiar with one and it's made me so complacent, so full of myself as if i too didn't have things to be surprised by and scared of--i never felt small beside the ocean or mountains because i grew up to it, but this lake terrified me last time i was near it with the tide and the moon and i know it was the meds that made me think the things i did then but it's no less scary now to see it all darker and quieter, lapping against the sky and washing it out--as if everything boiled down to poverty and wealth and wasn't just dynamics that are limited to human existence) as a child stories about constellations were more interesting for their mythology than the stars themselves (just lights in the sky, too far away to be much but decoration, and later, a sign of home, familiar in its muted beauty--i might have read where the name milky way came from but with typical childish arrogance decided that it must be impossible to see it that way now and probably it is, but this is enough) and as an adolescent my walls were covered in posters of nebulae and artists' renditions of the martian landscape and i loved it as the backdrop for stories, never saw it as one continuum like pictures of cities and landmarks taken separately without the realization that it's all spots on a piece of land and since then i've only grown away, magnified the microscopic and forgotten that i don't even know enough about the rest to feel any of it. maybe there was always the fear of the vast darkness, falling out into it, or worse, falling into something less forgiving than this particular planet--light is always good in our metaphors, we forget the violent source--but you're supposed to grow out of irrational fears and i've managed to swim in the lake easily enough, as if the edge was anything compared to the whole depth and so small compared to what's out there and fuck pretending to act like a rational adult, i mistook closeminded ignorance for rationality.
i went out intending to take pictures, ended up clutching the railing and feeling ridiculous at the need to run back the fuck inside and look away. so i stayed and i looked and i didn't last that long, but long enough for the moment.
i hope i remember this the next time i fail to feel anything other than disappointed.
i thought the stars were bright last night but they were only coming in through patches in the cloud cover and tonight it's all clear and the whole upturned bowl of it out there is clear like the ceiling of a planetarium except better, except there's more, and i feel...chastised? shaken. staggered. how arrogant and self-assured i am, as if i've seen enough to know or understand anything just because i've heard a few concepts before, when the universe out there is so vast and beyond understanding and therefore slightly terrifying, at least at first glance, beautiful and terrible and immense and not needing me to wrap my head around it though i know i'll wrap around at least this glimpse and it's silly how i've never been anywhere with this little light pollution (being an immigrant always meant familiarity with opposite sides of the world where most people i meet are only familiar with one and it's made me so complacent, so full of myself as if i too didn't have things to be surprised by and scared of--i never felt small beside the ocean or mountains because i grew up to it, but this lake terrified me last time i was near it with the tide and the moon and i know it was the meds that made me think the things i did then but it's no less scary now to see it all darker and quieter, lapping against the sky and washing it out--as if everything boiled down to poverty and wealth and wasn't just dynamics that are limited to human existence) as a child stories about constellations were more interesting for their mythology than the stars themselves (just lights in the sky, too far away to be much but decoration, and later, a sign of home, familiar in its muted beauty--i might have read where the name milky way came from but with typical childish arrogance decided that it must be impossible to see it that way now and probably it is, but this is enough) and as an adolescent my walls were covered in posters of nebulae and artists' renditions of the martian landscape and i loved it as the backdrop for stories, never saw it as one continuum like pictures of cities and landmarks taken separately without the realization that it's all spots on a piece of land and since then i've only grown away, magnified the microscopic and forgotten that i don't even know enough about the rest to feel any of it. maybe there was always the fear of the vast darkness, falling out into it, or worse, falling into something less forgiving than this particular planet--light is always good in our metaphors, we forget the violent source--but you're supposed to grow out of irrational fears and i've managed to swim in the lake easily enough, as if the edge was anything compared to the whole depth and so small compared to what's out there and fuck pretending to act like a rational adult, i mistook closeminded ignorance for rationality.
i went out intending to take pictures, ended up clutching the railing and feeling ridiculous at the need to run back the fuck inside and look away. so i stayed and i looked and i didn't last that long, but long enough for the moment.
i hope i remember this the next time i fail to feel anything other than disappointed.