Those stars and then some
Last summer I drove through Iowa, and I was taken by the beauty of all those golden corn fields, and that bluest of skies, overwhelmed with those thunderous, heavy rolling clouds, ready to drench the land that has grown so much. Just all that open space, all that the world has to offer. All to be found in the middle of nowhere.I love love love the book Life of Pi. For a time in my life, thinking about this book became a sort of hobby because I did it so often. An incredible story of love and beauty and finding yourself, but what captures me is the thought of that gigantic, overwhelming ocean and the exhilarating idea of being totally alone out there with all those stars, so many that you could just cry because they are so beautiful and so rarely displayed the way they should be. I love thinking about what it would be like out on the ocean in pitch darkness, the “great unknown” surrounding me, splashing my toes with the uncertainty of it all. The stars would have to provide me with all the light I would need.
I remember when I first saw the stars, I mean, really saw them. I was at a lake in another middle of nowhere and as dusk turned to night, I couldn’t believe that there were so many that I had never seen before. As a suburban kid, I had thought, for my whole life that maybe there were thousands of stars, but that night at the lake, it became clear to me, that there were actually billions, and just because I couldn’t usually see them from where I was, it didn’t mean that they weren’t there all along. I didn’t know what to think--I was speechless, which, to be honest, doesn’t happen very often, but I literally just laid there in the dirt because it all just seemed too good to be true. And I just cried because it was all just so incredible, almost too much goodness to know existed. After the discovery of the stars, my life has never been the same.
Life is like this, just a giant bowl of stars that right when you are exposed to one more than you knew about, your life is changed forever. Once you have seen them, you can never forget that those stars exist. Just that possibility of a world greater than you could have imagined changes everything.
Ashland, Oregon is like my bowl of stars. Sometimes you find places that complete you and other times, they find you. Bellingham, Washington is a place that I found, a place that felt like home at a time when I needed more than I could give myself. And it was like home in so many ways, because there were pieces of myself that I had to collect up there and somehow I knew that. Ashland, however, is a place that found me. Throughout these past four years, I have lost myself and found myself over and over again and this town has been the witness to it all. I have picked up pieces that I could never have thought I would and carried them. With so much to learn, I have fallen in love, in every sense of the word, with and in this place. My heart grew too big while I was there, and I will leave some of it behind, so I can come back and find myself when I don’t know where I have gone.
If I can leave you with anything, it would be this: Trust yourself because you are capable of more than you realize-- more life, more passion, more love. May your wishes be the least of what you get and may you all remember to look at those stars and count them like blessings, because life is short and sweet. It’s a big world out there-- full of dark nights, and a whole ocean of unknowns, but rest assured that the heart is always waiting to lead you back to those starry skies, helping you collect the pieces of yourself that can be picked up along the way.
posted by Mary @ 9:37 PM
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