Look up, look up. The near dark night sky has another show tonight if you are far enough away from city lights and a bright moon does not obscure the chasing of meteors across the sky. The Southern Delta Aquarid meteor shower should just about peak tonight and tomorrow night.
Those in the Southern Hemisphere will be able to see them the best, but my house in the Seattle area has still proven a decent platform for viewing at least six of these in the last hour (between 9 pm and 10 pm Pacific time). I’ve spent the past hour out on my southern deck off the dining room of my house, parked in a cozy papasan with my earthbound fuzzy beasts.
My dogs don’t look at the sky unless there are birds they see. Dog’s necks, have you noticed, are rarely fashioned to stretch backwards. Much as I love them, my canines don't dream on stars and meteor showers or exclaim at the colors of the sky on a summer night. I know they dream of fine things, luxury of a velour dog bed, treats that feed a hungry dog gut, nice and tasty bones, the gristle of a chicken leg, or the rawhide chew they’ve dragged from room to room, soggily passed from mouth to mouth in a growly tug-of-war.
We humans can look up. We were meant to look up, to gaze at the sky, to marvel at the shape of Orion, and know that what we first see as empty points on the slanting linear three-star belt of the Hunter are actually millions of miles of living and dying celestial pieces of matter, sending light to us that only now we see, and then now we don’t.
The night sky gives us a vantage point of something beyond our immediate, direct line of sight, a glimpse of something so much bigger than our own soul. It’s the hint of a blinking racing rock, the scrape of a flaming ignition through the atmosphere that we catch only on the periphery of our vision. If there is no greater wonder than the wonder of the clear night sky, then, that is enough for us, or it should be.
Look up tonight, break out of your ceilings and walls, the hum of the television, the draw of that mystery novel, the notes of your music no matter how beautiful. Go outside and look up, and try to catch the silence of a falling star, make a wish, take a breath, and remember that we are surrounded by millions of flying bodies, some seen, some not seen.
Unchained stars, released from the bonds of eternity, flailing and burning their way through the universe, past our eyes, but visible if we but keep eyes wide open, staring outward, staring upward. Sometimes staring slightly off-center of what we want to see. Looking at stars is like that - sometimes you cannot look directly at a star to really see it. Will we see a death of elements, or a burgeoning of life encompassed in light, a changing of matter into energy? Will we see the souls that stars become, the souls of people long gone, long passed from here and now there, so far up there?
Note - I won’t likely be able to watch the Perseids this year much. Watch them and tell me about them when they peak, will you? The Perseids are definitely one of my favorite meteor showers each year.
A little Yeats for tonight’s viewing, though I never tire of the flame of a meteor...
I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea:
We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can pass by and flee;
And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,
Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that never may die.
A weariness comes from those dreamers, dew-dabbled, the lily and rose,
Ah, dream not of them, my beloved, the flame of the meteor that goes,
Or the flame of the blue star that lingers hung low in the fall of the dew: For I would we were changed to white birds on the wandering foam—I and you.
I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,
Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more:
Soon far from the rose and the lily, the fret of the flames, would we be,
Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea.
Sea of clouds over northern Nevada, on the way home from Las Vegas and NN10...