The Star

No, I'm not talking about Liam Neeson or Colin Farrell. Not Javier Bardem or Gael Garcia Barnel either.

Writing about stars for me is like writing love poems: you're inviting literary disaster.  As a creative writing teacher, I forbade them.  So, you're warned. 

There is sunlight without which we would literally die.  There is moonlight, which, everyone knows, causes babies to be born in threes, insomniacs to lie awake all night, lovers to remember why they had to have it to begin with (not to mention pole-vaulting cows). All great stuff.  But starlight?

Starlight cuts through light years of dark, winking in the velvet, timed with our pulse and breath. We are honor-bound to wish upon the brightest one.  Sailors - the good ones - steer by them still.  They are equated with diamonds in nursery rhymes - that adamant stone that will cut glass, and turn the fiercest bridezilla into a salamander as she gazes at her left hand. "Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art!" Go ahead, Google Keat's poem right now. You won't be sorry.

My grandmother told my sisters and me to 'follow our star' - to go for that wild dream.  She mailed me - Queens Village to Wellsville, NY - the most beautiful statue of the Virgin Mary, with a blue velvet sari, and a halo of stars on a tin frame.

Why is the star-lady naked?  Because she's protected, and therefore, unafraid.  Not brave - a trait that requires some kind of threat to elicit.  She's simply serene.  She knows she is good - all parts of her.  A little like Jesus, she's resting one foot on the water - utterly supported, because she believes.  One pitcher spills into the earth, the other replenishes the waters.  She is the Water Bearer of the sign of Aquarius.  Although that's an air sign, the overlay of water on the quality of wind (relationships) urges an awakening to the fact that all beings are made of the same big soul.  What Whitman called the "me myself." While you're at it, open that anthology from high school to "Leaves of Grass."  It's a tear-jerker, I tell ya!

When I was twelve, my family had moved to a ginormous old house on the top of a hill in a new city.  We had left our friends behind.  I was beyond lonely, not helped by the fact I had a ginormous bedroom all to myself.  More space to be lost in.  One night, in my pajamas, I walked to the window.  It was deep winter, but a clear night, too cold for snow. I rested one hand on a tile of leaded window, feeling the leak of cold air.  The snow on the ground was star-encrusted.  But when I looked up, one bright star mimed to me that everything was alright.  And the star saw itself reflected in my tears.

Look at the bird atop the tree.  OK, I won't even send you searching.  Here: 

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254 Emily Dickinson "Hope" is the thing with feathers— That perches in the soul— And sings the tune without the words— And never stops—at all— And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard— And sore must be the storm— That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm— I've heard it in the chillest land— And on the strangest Sea— Yet, never, in Extremity, It asked a crumb—of Me.

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