I still gaze heavenward

I am a professional stargazer. I am home on a soft bed of grass, under a moonlit sky. I lay down, look up, and gaze into the heavens. My spirit likes it there, and if I lay long enough, it might leave my imperfect body and go for a moment to dance through the constellations to the beat of my steady heart. It is then that my soul is at rest.

This city is alive. It is vibrant and ever-improving, ever-changing, ever-illuminated by the light created by man. We are busy. We work by day. We work by night. The street lamps, the car lights, the buildings and their yellow-glowing windows. The sirens flash by, accompanied by the noise of trouble, the noise of wickedness, the noise of urgency. The oil refineries glow blue, electric, efficient and blinding. Inside are housed unhealthy men working the night shift, cursing the darkness for taking them from their homes and wives and precious children. Head west and you will end up wandering downtown streets that are loud and never without movement. It is there you will find, even among the light, the darkness of humankind. The man who walks by the homeless beggar without notice, the cold silence on the metro train, and the people who hardly notice that they are alive, let alone the very sky they all live under. The very thing above our heads that connects us all.

It is in this city that I still look heavenward, hoping each night that maybe an old, shining friend will appear among the blankness that is this city's night sky. But they are always gone--the stars are never there. And it was only just tonight that I realized why they must leave me.

Those friends, the stars, are glorious beyond description. They are moving phenomenons from worlds away. They are far too beautiful, far too superior, far too celestial for the eyes of the city. Their perfection cannot coexist with the wickedness of this world.

Instead, we must go to them. You and I, the dreamers of these sickly, unrestful metropolises. We have seen the infinite, our spirits have danced in the sky, and we are too fond of the stars to be fearful of the night. We must go, for we know that once we have found our place among those stars, our souls will always long to go back. We will leave the cities and go very far, over mountains and through countrysides and down long desert roads. Those are the places our stars reside; places untouched by the imperfect hand of man. That is where those celestial lights deserve to be, and that is where our hearts belong.