Some nights when I look up before going inside each evening and see the constellation of Orion tilting above my house over the southern face of Mount Battie, I feel lucky. It's as if I have a heavenly guardian or something, to see that familiar figure in the profound celestial blue of the winter night sky.
It's human nature to make sense of things, to create patterns out of things, delineate them. Most cultures have their own star stories. We're just trying to shape that vast distant ether, that unknowable vacuum of space pricked with the cold light of millions of distant suns, into something knowable. So we draw lines between different stars and create Orion, the big hunter, or Gemini, the twins, or Taurus, the bull, or Cassiopeia, the queen on her thrown. And we note the singular stars, the ones that stand out: Polaris, the North Star; Sirius, the brightest; Betelgeuse, a red giant.
But really, Orion is no sky king or starry god. And he's certainly not watching over me. "He" is just a collection of stars that in reality aren't anywhere near each other. Seen three dimensionally from somewhere out in the galaxy, the three stars that line up so nicely to create Orion's belt aren't lined up at all. They're light years apart any way you look at them. Really, there's no order out there. The stars, as I understand it, are just particles hurtling away from the Big Bang that started it all--shrapnel. And we're all just along for the ride.
We tell stories to comfort ourselves. But some nights, I don't see any stories in the sky overhead, just an unfathomable emptiness, space stretching infinitely away.
Fathomless night sky
shines with our made-up patterns,
offers cold comfort.
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It's as if I have a heavenly guardian or something, to see that familiar figure in the profound celestial blue of the winter night sky.sober living
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