Starlight (A Memoir)

Photo by: soundzgreg.blogspot.com

I remember the dark street, lit by the orange glow of streetlights. The snow squeaks and groans under my feet. With my hands thrust into my inadequate pockets, I look down, because looking up makes me cold. I am alone, too tired to hurry, too cold to stop.

            I remember, tiredly daydreaming here on my bed. Sometimes I get up and stretch, bent, bowed over my pillow, eyes covered by my hands. There are times when I could cry. My body is weary, my mind even more so. My every move is marked with it, drawn out with my want of rest. It is a deep, bone-drained weariness that grips my soul as I sit here, head leaned back against the wall. I tell myself that I cannot go on much longer.

            I work on sporadically, I suppose, listening to the same stale music, staring at a blank page. How I would love to give in to the mindless amusement of Facebook, or Youtube. My smiles would be tired ones, but they would be smiles. But then the weight of my work would descend even harder than before, crashing through my mind, dulling it.

Writer’s block.

I do it anyway.

            Walking, I dare to look up. The cold, infinite blackness of space looks back. I sometimes feel the sucking of space as it steals the warmth from my body. Our pitiful attempts, our stampings and our wrappings, to stay warm are met with ultimate entropy, the cold, dark emptiness that surrounds us. I sometimes wonder that I don’t get sucked out into space with along with the heat, dispersed into nothingness.

            The music on my laptop plays on, filling my mind with something that it can hold onto. It runs and reruns in my mind thoughtlessly, wearily. I don’t know why I listen to music while working. My thoughts are pushed away by lyrics, fading out into lost memory. Coherence is almost impossible to maintain. But I am so tired, so bone-dead. I need something to keep me alive.

            I see the stars. One by one, they come back to me.

            “Look, there’s the Big Dipper” I say to myself, thoughts connecting in a linear fashion. “And there’s the North Star, because the two last stars that make the Dipper’s dipper point towards it”. Perhaps I turn around and say to myself “There’s Orion, and there’s Taurus, because the three stars of Orion’s belt point towards Taurus’ eye. Wow, look how bright Taurus’ eye is. And there are the Pleiades on his back.” Taurus simply leers at me with his bright eye. I realize I don’t like him, and that I am cold. I look back down, and wonder why I don’t feel comforted.

            There is no comfort for me in my bed. There is simply the realization that it’s 11 PM already, and I need to sleep, and there is the apprehension of another dark morning at 6:30 AM. Sleep is a comfort to me, but it is one that is so little used, so little profitable. It offers the opportunity to fade into nothingness, into warmth, glorious warmth; glorious oblivion. But then I am brought back to the reality of the black sky in the morning, the cold, the weariness. Another morning and no sight of dawn. Another cold stamping and wrapping.

There is no star that shines on me, with a tail like a kite.

There is no star both warm and bright.

Not a star in sight.

No warmth. No light.

Twisting and turning, I search for that star, growing colder, hands out of my pockets. Is it anywhere to be found? Where are you?

Light pollution.

Here on my bed, I am splayed. I lean against the wall, head weakly turned towards my crucifix, bleeding out my last Hail Marys while I drift off. I will fall asleep after the first decade or so. The Rosary will fall from my hand, my prayers will end, my eyes will shut, my body fall.

Tomorrow I will wake again. Tomorrow, I will find my precious Rosary underneath my chest where I had fallen the night before. I will pick it up again, loth to be parted from it. Weariness will set in, again. Tomorrow, I will again venture into the cold to search the stars. Tomorrow, I will look for the star with the tail like a kite. Tomorrow, I will look for the light; Tomorrow, I will strive to keep the warmth. Again.

For I cannot help but hope for that star, the heralding of dawn.