Nighttime, Staring at the Stars
Togetherness, winter, and the desire to effervesce
[audio quality is a little different today, but in the spirit of embracing imperfection,
listen to the recording]
I am writing this backward. I start with the end first. A period, definitive, a full stop, and then the sentence; a film played back to front.
I am walking on the sidewalk on a night that’s cold and quiet. Looking up to the dusk I am astonished to see Orion. I am astonished to be in the busiest city, or one of them, lit up in excess, near constantly, looking up between buildings, there as the stars’ witness. I don’t remember the last time I saw a star in this city, but I am transported in an instant to the cusp of last August, September, camping, staring up, back on the earth, gazing through the mesh window of my tent. It was warmer then. Crickets rubbed their legs together, singing; sparrows chirped at the days’ end, all those songs were a bookend, as families and friends and children laughed and yelled around their fires.
One, two, three stars I see, here, now, in this cold December; one, two three, and then the light turned green, and I crossed the street, here at the precipice of winter. I look around momentarily for someone to show this to, and share this with, a shared witness, this night’s small lights, a walks’ gift, a momentary astonishment. I keep it for myself. A question reaching out to any and all of us under the then-dark sky. Can you see the stars, too?
One, two, three: three small stars in a row. From where I stood those stars were pinpricks of light, like a god took a pin and pressed it three times into the taut surface of a black page, or those light boxes as kids, unwrapped under a tree, lit up from the back, making up shapes with plastic, pressing in, following the lines. One, two three: three stars lined up, a belt seen in the distance, quiet — and I think of the burning we’d see if we could fly closer to the stars, those orbs of gas and light and cloud up close and zoomed in. One, two, three: these stars float endlessly in the night sky, three pinpricks of hope, endurance, of distance, of radiance, ever so small from where I stand. I quietly thank this moment, this midnight blue, the dark and beauty and blazing and the far away. I keep moving.
What would the starlight tell to us, now, in this cold, this almost winter moment? I hope it would send wisdom, straightforwardness, honesty, courage, alongside stories of hope, those constellations of endurance. Would they teach us longevity in the face of pain’s insistence? I turn the street corner, thinking of this season of gathering, this season of lights, piles of pines on the sidewalks, of candlelights, of advents, of everyday prayers, of cold sidewalks, of radiators humming, of deadlines, of celebration. I am thinking of collectivity, of gathering, of burning small and together, of voices woven together like a thread, each of us stars and fires, each of us voices and burning with something, something. Think of radiance; think of warming; think of a moment in time asking, pleading, demanding for our insistence. This of now — of life and its persistence. Life exists as a force and it wants to be lived, and it wants to be lived through us, and we want that for the masses. Let them live.
I come to the glow of the page each week with this same feeling: astonishment at the big and small, human and the non, watching the glow and the hum of bright lights, life, living, fading out, far away. I struggle, understandably, to look away from my screen. I do not want to. Look to the ways we are connected, connecting, urging toward each other in a kind of hope for belonging, a sense known innately. How we hold ourselves, but more, how we hold others there. How the fading daylight gives us longer nights. Black is the night, I think, and beautiful. Cold is the heart of the violent, violence born from fear. I think of the martyred, the families gone, their light fading out too soon. I walk home and see the starlight, remembering we share the same sky. The evening is a blanket, the weight of the world heavy, under the atmosphere that holds us. What do we all see, envision, and wonder, looking out at the day and the dusk? What do we collectively envision or imagine instead?
Later, I am looking for the verb. The coffee in the morning is strong. I am going to the root, I want to know the origin of effervescent. I want an active form of the word, eager to know if it is possible for one “to effervesce,” to end in -ing, a verb, active, like starlight radiating, like an echo going on, like the sounds slowly fading, like a film slowly fading instead of a harsh cut, like a star as it dies slowly, a leaf floating off into the horizon of distance. Little small lights, each of us, gathered together like starlights, like sunlight, like a radiate blaze, generative in our togetherness.
Collective effervescence is the feeling we share held in spaces of ritual. It is the ingredient of awe and full body chills, an invisible line, the stitch, the thread, the hands held in meeting, the community, the tethering together of each other entranced by something larger than us, a wide conversation, a constellation. It is the matter of ritual in the moments that matter: in shows, in songs, in dances, in meeting halls, in dinner tables, in parks, at sunsets, in gatherings and celebrations. It is the belonging that bonds us. It is the deep heart feeling, the visceral response of the whole body, the shouting and chanting of lines out in the the crowd in protest taking up space across rooms and stretching out across bridges. It is the heart we feel larger than ourselves, singular I melted down into we, connected always to the earth by gravity, connected when we avail ourselves to the witnessing wonders of community.
I walk home in the cold to the warm home. I think of the stars. Give us the slow fade, not the definitive, let the world live peacefully, and not meet the quick, violent end. Let us learn from the stars about distance, about the wisdom of dedication, of endurance, of shining warmth through the coldness. What radiates for you in your small moments, in your communities, in the moments of coming together? What do you notice? Let us be together up close and at a great distance. Let us all gather around like starlight. Starlight.
Gathering together around creative practice is a favorite fire of mine to tend to. I am so grateful for all of you who have come to a class this year. You keep paper in my studio and food on my table; thank you. Come this week to our last remaining classes, linked below. See you there.
upcoming experiences:
December 6 | Marbled Stationery brooklyn
December 10 | Fort Green Artist’s Bazaar brooklyn
December 11 | Bookbinding: Pamphlet Stitch brooklyn
December 13 | Taste & Write: Meditating on the Senses brooklyn
December 13 | Bookbinding: French Link Stitch brooklyn
December 16 | Bookbinding: Pamphlet Stitch queens
December 17 | Build Your Journaling Practice brooklyn
December 18 | Grounded in Gratitude: Meditation + Journaling brooklyn
December 21 | Casing In Lined Journals brooklyn
nourished by, nourishing:
Made us a playlist for drive — as in, car driving and motivation/enduring. Or for running. Or for writing. This week I’m cooking dumplings in soup, envisioning what to do with a jar of kimchi, keeping hot the coffee. Reading (and loving) Tone by Samatar/Zambreno, heavily underlined, and writing mostly in one of these about what I love, what I tend to avoid, and want to remember.
HEIRLOOM JOURNALS arrived this week! They are so beautiful, bigger and brighter this year, filled with more color; I am thrilled to send these out to your homes. If you’re on IG, I talked about them here.
