Celestial disappointments

Events in the sky had a way of eluding me for the longest time.

The first experience I can remember clearly was the approach of Haley’s Comet in 1986. I was terribly excited. I was 9 years old and relished thinking about what I’d be like in 76 more years. A grandma? Rich? Bones in a grave?

On the night it was supposed to be seen, my friends and I were outside waiting eagerly. It was incredibly cloudy, but this did little to diminish my optimism. This was a big deal. Something incredibly important was about to happen; my life was about to change.

We didn’t see a thing.

We were all disappointed, but I was the most upset. My friend Beau’s dad took pity on us and set off some Roman candles in the middle of the street as a consolation prize. This was only the first of many disappointments.

My grandpa bought me a telescope, and much to my embarrassment I could never see anything through it.

I wished earnestly on the first star I saw every night. I said the little chant and everything, “Star light, star bright…” Those stars never gave me anything.

Everyone I knew had seen shooting stars. While playing outside at night, friends would regularly say, “Oh, look! A shooting star! Oh, you missed it.” I would train my eyes on the sky for long stretches of time and never did I get to see a shooting star.

One night when I lived in Richmond, there was a meteor shower in the middle of the winter. It was supposed to be at its brightest around 4am when it was twenty degrees. I was eager to see the meteors, and dutifully bundled up and stood outside behind my apartment building watching the sky. After a half an hour of freezing and not seeing even a single meteor, I went back inside. This was pretty much my luck until I moved to San Francisco.

I moved in here in July 2005, and from a bench with a friend in Noe Valley one night in November, I about fell over when I saw a shooting star. I got so excited that he was a little alarmed, believing that my standards for entertainment were very, very low.

Since then I have seen hundreds of them. I catch them randomly all the time, and in October of 2007 I lay on a blanket in the backyard watching for shooting stars and contemplating constellations with someone I loved. One night last summer while on a midnight drive down Highway 1 with a friend, we saw a gargantuan flaming blue meteor, hurtling toward the ocean and we screamed with shock and delight.

Last night I lay in bed feeling desperately like I wanted to move away. I contemplated the things and the people and the memories I would have to leave behind, and I wondered if celestial events were included in those.

A surprising discovery

I recently got a new cell phone and, after much harassment from a couple of friends who are avid texters (is that a word?), had text messaging enabled on it.

I'd never been a fan of texting before, but I admit that on New Year's Eve I was a little drunk on this new ability. At least 60 texts were exchanged that night--largely while I waited an hour for the 38 Geary--with friends all over the country. It was fun.

I'm a little over it now, but I still participate. It doesn't help that I'm extraordinarily slow at texting. This is mostly due to the fact that I steadfastly refuse to send texts that say stuff like, "Where R U?" I type it all out, because typing in such a short-handed fashion makes me feel like some kind of caveman banging rocks together.

Anyway, a good friend of mine loves to send me random texts when he's out drinking. He'll say things like, "There's a lot me [sic] pretty men here, I'm fearing for my virginity." or "The cure for a lonely heart is only 2 tall beers and a cigarette away." He likes to tell me whenever he's somewhere that's playing my song ("Amie" by Pure Prairie League--what!? You don't know it? Get on that!) Last night he said, "The southern cross is angry." I got this one as I was in the process of transitioning from one location to another and didn't have time to respond. But when I got home and looked up "southern cross" to try and figure out what in the holy hell he was talking about, I found that it refers to a constellation, Crux.



This is the disturbing part: I can't see the southern cross. Apparently, if you're in the northern hemisphere you have to be south of 30 degrees latitudes to see it. (This makes sense for him because he lives in FL.)



Now, I know that you can't see all the constellations at all times of the year, but it honestly never occurred to me that, no matter what time of year it is, your geographic location only allows you to see a fixed range of the sky. How did this not occur to me? I'm sort of upset.

Of course, this is quite likely not what he meant at all.