People, they come together.
People, they fall apart.
No one can stop us now.
'Cause we are all made of stars.
-Moby, We Are All Made of Stars
Days in Lisboa are unpredictable. If the weather application says no rain until late in the day, it will rain at nine in the morning and continue until dark. Likewise, if the forecast is for a day full of rain, the day will dawn with bright sun. When you live this close to the Atlantic Ocean, you have to accept the weather you get. Like many things in life, you hold your hand out the window and guess what will come next and then you accept what will be.
On dry days I start laundry early. Doing the wash ties me to the house for hours at both the start and end of the day. On wet days I do things, I get stuff done. I go online initially. I check bank accounts, moving on to clearing out my email inbox (replying when needed) and finally writing up a to-do list for the rest of the day. There are so many things I must do with what waking time I am granted. Mine are the daily rituals of a man getting closer to 70 than to 60.
If the rain has stopped by the time I pull away from the screen I head out for my daily exercise. This morning on only slightly wet pavement I walked about a mile and a half in just under half an hour. Today my musically inclined adult son accompanied me and we talked almost the whole time about Merle Haggard, Marty Robins and John Prine. We talked about the talent of telling a very visual, very visceral story in two minutes and a half.
We talked about how sometimes you have to consider what the lyrics meant when the song was written. John Prine’s Sam Stone, Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore and Hello in There were all released while the Vietnam war was still raging. They were anti-establishment protest songs. As time has moved on, for almost 50 years, they have become quaint artifacts of an idealistic generation that has lost its way. So many years have passed since that first John Prine album dropped. I was a teenager then, and decades have passed since l first heard it. Those songs poured out of our family's kitchen radio while I did my chores, i.e., drying dinner dishes. That house is gone. That radio is gone. That part of my life is gone.
In years past I rode my bicycle for miles at a time for exercise. That was exhilarating. But one day I fell and tore up my rib cage. Flying down the streets on two wheels is mostly over for me. My daily walks are my exercise. My rhythmic footfalls are my meditation, my prayers to whoever might be listening. My prayers have become much more frequent, much more urgent and far more heartfelt.
Unlike today on most days when I wander out I travel alone. Trust me on this, I carefully watch for cracks in the stones that make up my pathway. Hundreds of thousands of cracks await my feet as I shuffle through my route. Moving carefully, I barely see the stores lining the street. Rarely do I glimpse the sky above, lest a crack reach out and grab my toes. This would give gravity the chance to wrap its tendrils around me and pull me down hard. Day, dusk, or night my focus is downward, for safety I tell myself.
One day less than a year ago I looked up when I set out on an evening journey. A brightly pulsing star blazed by and was lost. Taking a solid stance with my legs apart and hands on my hips I gazed upward at the sky. What was that?
In my youth, I knew the sky so well. Gazing up at the stars that moonless night, I saw that the sky I knew had been forever changed. That shooting star I watched blaze across the sky disintegrating into nothingness had once been a prominent feature on my mental map of the universe. Now a black and gaping hole left the firmament diminished. How to explain the feeling? At that moment the air in my lungs seemed inadequate and my body felt like nothing more than a shell.
As the year wore on more stars fell from the sky. It became obvious that the cosmos I had once known like the back of my hand was shrinking. Darkness spread. Stars that had barely registered in my awareness were now quite notable in their absence. Stars I had known since I was a teen had disappeared over the years but this was different, this was much more personal. As this year has progressed I have kept an eye out for more changes in the firmament. This universe I have known for almost my entire life seems to be ebbing away.
A few days ago, another bright star burned out. She was a brilliant and magnificent star similar to the one who vanished earlier in the year. The star that streaked by had shed so much light on this world. With this one gone as well; the sky became noticeably darker. As I stare at the sky tonight I am shaken.
These lights burning out, or simply blinking off into nothing, will only accelerate. In just a few years the sky I knew as a young man will be no more. One by one the beacons in my firmament will fall or fade. Truth be told I may not be here when what was my sky goes completely dark. But until the day when the last of my beloved night lights turns nova and then fades I hope someone hold the memories of the original star chart near and dear to their breast.
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