Mississippi keeps secrets so well

Looking over at my saved drafts, “I drove two hours to see Jupiter and her moons…”

I remember, now, more visible that night than she’d been since 1990. All the way up the Natchez Trace to French Camp, Mississippi, the darkest spot on our map, and a little observatory called Rainwater.

Listening to Charles Pope rave about the universe is probably one of the more rewarding things I could possibly do. Period. Donald Miller said that sometimes you have to see someone else love something before you can really love it, too. It’s like they’re showing you the way. I thought I liked space, turns out I don’t know shit about shit, except how mind-blowing it all is, and the typical revelation that we’re so so tiny.

Charles star hopped around, finally pointing out what he called a binary star, and said it was his favorite body to examine in the summer. Squinting at the eyepiece, it returned to me a pair of glowing dots, blue and yellow, sharing a center of gravity, around which both are constantly revolving. I got lost in Charles’s talk.. these are not the only stars to compliment each other, did you know that all stars in the universe have a mate? some even have three or four, and they could be relatively close to one another, or separated by an entire galaxy, revolving like everything else at the whim of gravity, weak yet significant.

FACT: our Sun is the only star that does NOT have a mate. As if it were hurled from its nebulous at creation, I like to think our Sun a rogue star, perhaps even the devil himself. I don’t know if I want to take this that far, but one day that Sun is going to swallow up the earth, so maybe it is a lovely disguise.

in nick jaina’s clubhouse

Repair is the dream of the broken thing.

I feel that.

from a journey

I liked stepping into the balmy air past customs when I first arrived in Costa Rica. A hundred or more taxi call posters waving, everyone shouting; and I was just glad to make it out of the drizzle and on to our mighty bus. She would prove herself again and again throughout our trip at the command of Carlos, her driver, and perhaps the traveler king. Not that we made any decent offerings, unless you count the sleepers’ slow breath fogging windows in the night’s glow. Sounds about right.