Stardust

Stardust. 378 words and then 178, and then 85, and then 25, and then one. and this is what I'm left with.

Stardust.

(I don't know much about stardust, so how I'm going to write for the next ten minutes on stardust is light years beyond me.)

Well, starting with what you know is as good a place as any I guess. I know that stars are just gas and fire and other science words, and i know that stars can burn out and we, here on earth, won't even know it until up to centuries later because they're just that far away.

Well, Tamara wrote a phrase on the board the other day, one she got from our surrealism class, and it really hit me right there in the thoracic cavity, man. (Right in the mitral valve. Or aorta if you please. Anyway, enough about heart anatomy the point is that it hit me, okay?) and it said "let dreams stay stars" and it had me thinking (even though surrealism isn't supposed to be about thinking, right?) well anyway i was thinking about this line and I've been thinking about it for the entire week and i just can't get that line out of my brain. i mean, how true is it? (so freaking true that its stuck to me, that's how.)

Stars are far away, impossible to reach, impossible to touch, and yet we spend billions and trillions of dollars on space expeditions to get up and close to one like it will be a glowing humanoid or some s*** instead of gas and chemicals that will burn your eyes right out of your head. And yet we still do it, like they hold the secrets of the universe, like god left a 'how to be human' guide in one of those infernos. and so that's like a dream, right? often unattainable and unreachable, but what the hell stops us from going after them anyway? nothing. damn nothing. we still chase those suckers like they're so close we can smell them, like Gatsby and that green light, that if we run a little faster and stretch our arms a little farther one glorious day...

maybe they'll touch a star one day. who am i to say they wont?

and stars are like dreams other ways too. they're bright and mysterious, something to look at when you feel down, something to remind you that even at night the light is still there.

But mostly they're like stars because it can be years, decades, or more, for us to realize they're dead and gone and often its too late, because we've already named them and plotted them into our maps and plans like they'll be there forever, one step closer and we'll have it, but it's too late for all that, because it's dead and gone and one day it will just flicker out of the sky and there will be nothing but a little black gap in the sky in the place we used to gaze at each night with longing, that star we prayed to each night, our own guardian angels are all sputtered out and vanished without so much as a trumpet blurt to warn us or so much as a feather left behind to prove they were ever there at all, and we've gone grey and old and there aren't anymore stars for us to look at because they've all been taken, and we've forgotten about all the others anyway while we've been looking at our own so we can't remember how to find another star or how to name one or how to find one in the sky at night even if there were any left for us.

and you think well maybe there's just a cloud there, because we all have rough times when we lose sight of our dreams and all but they come back they always come back because clouds can last forever. but there aren't clouds now. this is death and it's here and waiting and ready and just when we're ready to give it all up, to burn our star charts and toss out the dream catchers and retire our telescopes and stargazing blankets, our tired and lonely eyes catch sight of something else--the moon.

And suddenly we forget all about that silly little star because men have walked on the moon you know, brought back moon dust. So we turn our faces to the maiden of the night sky and we feel better because we aren't alone. We share our blankets with other moon gazers who want it just as badly as we do and we talk about it together and remember when a man walked on there on that face and say why the hell can't we so we don our moon suits and climb aboard our spaceships together and rocket into space but wait-- what's that on our gloves?

Why it's stardust.

Stardust?

But we've never touched the stars?

Have we?

So we brush it away and go to the moon and live happily together ever after
and the rest is just rust and stardust.