SubNova

About fifteen years ago, maybe more, I was camping with a band of gypsies close to San Diego, just north of the Mexican border. Yes, you read that right, I was camping with a band of gypsies. My theater people at the time were an unusual bunch, and we went to the sanctioned event called the Baron's War, where people would use modified weapons - all padded swords, axes, and halberds - and stage mock battles in various scenarios. While the aggro warriors beat each other senseless, earning bruises and faking death, we gypsies were off in our own tent getting drunk and taking naps until night came. As soon as it got dark, three or four of the warriors girlfriends would come drink with us and they danced as we played our drums.

At some point in the late evening, I walked away from the big red tent and into a clearing to see the tent from afar and hear the absolute absence of city sounds. And then I looked up. Across the sky were more stars than I felt I could comprehend, an overwhelming feeling of insignificance beneath this complex and limitless canopy. I almost fell to my knees, it was so staggering, but I slowly started to breathe and take this in. The more my eyes focused, the more I started to get perplexed about the concentration of stars in the middle. It didn't seem real. A voice off to my right explained that this was the rest of the galaxy I was looking at. I couldn't see who it was, but that was a rare moment of clarity that definitely made me aware of the size of things. Me, my problems and struggles with daily life, my loves and losses, were all sitting on one invisible dot swirling around one mostly invisible point of light, in perspective. On this unique world, I place importance on the small things, and sometimes they take the focus from the big picture. I had the vision of the really big picture for one night only. One brief moment in time that I can't seem to forget.

Such is the girl whom I called my moon. Such is the friend who escaped L.A. by clicking her heels three times and moving back North. Such is the one major love of my life who checks in on me every couple of years from the uncomfortable seat of married life. They all appear and disappear, brief moments of exciting rediscovery and silent rejection that keep them up in the memory of my night sky. I say what I say to them with full knowledge that my honesty either means nothing to them or can be completely irrelevant, and will often be met by good intentions followed by silence.

That's where I pick myself up and keep moving. That's where I continue to encourage myself to keep believing. It's because that sky is still out there. That possibility of finding that connection with someone again is still there. Hope is still alive, and all this, the rejection, the disappearing acts, is really irrelevant in perspective. We are just sitting on one arm of our galaxy, and I am just one invisible dot on the map.