Oh. My. The world seemed too big tonight. No, big isn't even the right word. It seemed too large, too ominous and impounding, too dark and too obtrusive, too much to handle and too quickly advancing. It scared me, and I can't correctly explain why. I was just there, sitting in my hot tub and trying to decipher between stars and 747s, intrigued after reading a few paragraphs of Davy Rothbart's 'The Lone Surfer Of Montana, Kansas' (interesting, by the way, really short and simple, I recommend it!) about people who wish on 747s mistaking them for stars, and wondering if that was simply a pretty sentence or a terrible truth. I've decided the latter, beause I found it almost impossible to tell a difference 6,375,371 miles away, from my perspective straight up into space.

As I was staring at these stars and these airplanes, and wondering which was which and if it even mattered, I wondered if anybody had ever sat down and tried to count the stars. Not just one, two, three, on to the next good idea.. but really truly tried counting all the stars he or she could possibly see. I wondered if somebody had sat down one night, spread eagle on a lawn full of dead grass because they're never home to water it, and tried counting. I wonder how high they got. I wonder if they reached 100, 200, 650, one thousand or more.. is that even possible? Then I decided I might give it a try. But once I got to ten, I changed my mind. The universe is much too large to try and compile its' inhabitants into a number, into a box or a category. You can't do that! Stars will continually change and grow, they will die off and fade away, they will multiply and split off and divide, they'll make and create and they will destroy and deteriorate. There's no way to count the stars, it's an impossible feat for the simple human being.

That's a thought. Finally a challenge that a human being cannot meet. Although I understand there are many, we live in a world that tries to deny that fact. A world that says you can do anything you put your mind to. When in reality, you really truly cannot. Is that a sick joke, or a push to move forward and progress as a society? That's beside the point. The point is that this universe is too astoundingly large to sum up its' parts. Nobody can conquer it, not one of us. And if we believe we can, who do we think we are? A far superior being to the rest of us? No, we're all equal. When you tear off the facade and the walls and dig deep down to the core of a human being, we are all the same. Not one of us can hold a candle to another, not one of us can judge or believe we are exceeding in ability or skill or anything like that. Nobody can say they are greater, or more advanced, because what does that even mean?! It's all perception, it all boils down to human ability and approach. The inhabitants of this country are the same as those of any other, no matter the era, zip code, gender, or age, we are all equal. We are all subject under the same Earth and at night we all sleep under the same sky. Three hours after the sun sets in my hometown, somebody just like me will witness the same sun sinking into the same horizon line in a city on the big island of Hawaii.

I am so amazed by the expanse and vast greatness of this Earth we live in. The solar system, the atmosphere, the galaxy. I can't even begin to comprehend it, or even try to. I don't pretend to understand, I don't even necessarily want to understand. I like the idea of the unknown, of not knowing or realizing what I am surrounded by. I enjoy the frightening beauty of it all, it's a wonderful amazement like no other. I hope you all enjoy the sky tonight.