I rounded the corner of the hedge to my left and was struck by the wide corridor of dark lawns. The yards of the next four or five houses were all connected in a seemingly endless expanse of grass. It looked deep, soft, even and full. Trees lined the view and the houses to the left were all dark, or nearly so. The windows of one house flickered with a pale light, fading fast, now slow, now bluish, now orange, yellow, white… It was beautiful. The whole house slowly became a lantern, holding some glowing secret. I realised that the lights were the fault of a television upstairs. The realisation was a disappointment. The house was suddenly less interesting, less urgent an observation to make. I looked back up.

The sky was endless as it always is, and looked incredibly deep. The black of the air had depths never seen before, shifting and expanding. The stars glittered. I decided consciously that I would give myself over to the night, and then I took another step, as if up. I spread my arms and fell slowly backward, ending spread-eagled in the soft, damp grass. I gazed into the cluster of stars directly above me. To my right, there was a slightly dimmer, greenish-tinged triangular formation of stars. I had realised a bit earlier that it was a ship of some kind, and now I examined it more. I felt opened, and connected to it. I thought maybe if I spent some time with myself I would figure out some of the things that have been troubling me.

It being Thanksgiving, my thoughts rested on xxxx. I gave my mind license to construct a xxxxx. I put her, smiling and blonde, into his arms—two mental paper pictures. I gave him the look to wear that he sometimes gives me. It is a look of soft, laughing tenderness. Staring into the hard glow of the stars, I recalled his voice on Tuesday night, when he called me ‘love.’ A term of mild endearment, or a mistake; I am not sure even now how that made me feel. It was like being given an unasked-for glance inside the life of his heart. I realised that I was someone worthy of the idea of love, that it is a human possibility for any of us, and that I could stop feeling guilty for the slip of his tongue.

A smile spread through me momentarily. I felt a question from the sky: how does he make you feel? How does one decide what is worth suffering? So I began to explain it to them, Tuesday night and all. Somehow my descriptions always fell short, though, and I asked them please to just take it from my head. I said that they couldn’t understand (the questioning stars) because they were so vast so how could any of this seem important? Perhaps that was their answer. I was only asking these questions because they seemed the ones to ask.

I was frozen with night air but my body had slowed down enough in space that I was in some sense divorced from the cold. I felt the damp grass wetting my back and so I tried not to press any of my sharp angles—shoulders, elbows, hips—into the ground too much. Amazement and love and connectedness covered me like a clinging sheet. I saw the stars shimmer with a new, changing light and beauty. I understood that the questions were not coming just from one star but from all of them, and then they all glowed brighter than before for a moment. Glory. It was as though each individual star was united with all the others in that velvet vastness of the sky, while still retaining its special, specific, individual essence and self. By sending out their energies in unison, they could amplify all connections at will. It was as though they held hands in front of me and stepped together into a greater brightness and clarity, each with a smiling shimmer and uniquely defined form. Each star lost all cloudiness, all obscurity, and took on its own special colour and radiance. By joining their energies they were connected and simultaneously separated—individually strengthened and defined anew.

I asked to be admitted into that connection, and thanked them for showing it to me. It is a rare, regenerative loveliness. I knew then that the cold was a test, a trial, and that I would pass that trial. I threw open my sweater and embraced the air. The night wrapped around me, returning my desire for understanding. The greenish ship above me glimmered as if knowingly, but I did not feel myself rise to it. I think it was because I still have reservations about leaving Earth. I know that I am not done here yet. But god how I wanted to see the lights of the ship up closer, and to examine the structure of it. I saw a star shoot—a little star’s death, or birth. I felt that it was an entry, and acknowledgement of me, a blessing. Tears filled my eyes as I gave heartfelt thanks to them for showing themselves to me in that way.

Every now and then as we communicated, they would pulse with shared energy and come into that awe-inspiring clarity again. I could feel a force emanating from my body in waves as they did so. My entire body and mind ached for that beauty when it faded, waiting for it to return.

I realised the problem: why all people don’t see this, and why we have such trouble communicating on this level. Stars are fixed bodies. That is, they are fixed in space. They cannot move around, propelled by free will as human beings are. However, they are free in time. At first they didn’t fully understand why the cold was so difficult for me. They thought that I could move to a warmer time, and they were very sorry for me that I could not. I made it clear to them that humans are limited in a different way than they are. We can move all we want, are in fact always moving, driving cars, doing things, but time is not an act of will for us. Whether we read a book or write on, drive across the country or sit still, time still moves us along at her own interminable pace. We are allowed to taste and feel each moment, but we cannot truly stay in any one time. They felt so sorry for me, so much emotion and love, and all of that was transmitted directly to me through our connection, deepening in a beautiful way. Like neural pathways, those connections grow stronger with thought and use. Being human is not bad, I said. We have memory, which is a shadow of those lost moments.

Memory, I realised, is the gateway to all understanding. What we call memory is close to what they use and feel when they move through. We have just not yet evolved as a species to the point where we can break the barrier of the fourth dimension: TIME. We must share in their connection and exercise out faculties of perception and memory. Eventually, I hope that we can get to the point where we can move as they do. Even as humans we are not incapable of understanding. They are stuck, as we are, and they are loving and benevolent, and they too are confused. They want to know how we move. I do not know yet how i can help them, other than making an offering of a look inside my open mind. I noticed that there was a column of stars that had grown brighter than the rest. it was like a handful of diamonds, or drops of clear cool water, scattered over a sheaf of velvet. It was like a ladder—or rather, a climbing wall. I felt that I was being beckoned, but I could see that the ship was no closer and not lit up for me. I knew they were not taking me this time, but that was also okay. It was all okay.

--11.22.01