Starry Starry Nights
A reflection on NASA's glamour shots of the universe and how it is a sign for people who reason.
Welcome to my Substack #16, inspired by the James Webb Space Telescope. Soundtrack for this post: Levitate Playlist
1. I could never figure out the constellations. It all looked the same to me – a scattering of twinkly lights scattered across the sky. Mom would try to point them out in the sky to me – she loved to find each constellation and tell me their official name. It would make her eyes twinkle and she always proud of herself. Cassiopeia, Taurus, Orion. “Right there – follow my finger. Do you see the stars that are lined up?” I would get frustrated because, of course, all the stars were lined up, technically. Eventually, the only one I could spot in the sky was the brightest and biggest – The Big Dipper. No matter how much light pollution or smog obstructed my view, The Dipper was always there to guide my way north. Last year in the Adirondacks, I finally was able to spot with some regularity the three starred belt of Orion and the zig-zag of Cassiopeia. I was so proud of myself, Mom would have been so proud.
2. We hiked up the colorful sand dune just as the darkness of night was setting in. Everything was tinted in dusky hues of pinks and grays. The moon hadn’t come out yet, or maybe it never did, but it didn’t matter our in the desert – the starlight was so bright. He was cute with a biting sense of humor and unwavering charm. One of many White Boy crushes I had in college. Drew was a college Senior and our guide for Alternative Spring Break for our weeklong trip in Death Valley. The rest of the crew stayed by the campfire as the two of us lay back on blankets and pointed out stars in the sky. We made up our own constellation names – The Upside-Down Turtle, The Flying Witch, The UFO. A satellite crossed lazily across the sky. We kept our eyes wide skyward, and alert – we were determined to find a shooting star. I made a wish, of course, when the star flew by. It didn’t come true – he had a girlfriend, I think. Also, I had no game. For the rest of that week, and for many years after, I’d keep spotting “our” constellations in the sky. Hopeless romantic, I know.
3. Now, there are apps on ipads that you can just hold up to the sky and it will draw constellation creatures on the stars. I laid back on the lounge chair in the backyard of our Joshua Tree Airbnb and watched the stars emerge and dance in the sky. The “veggies” had triggered my motion sickness even though I was lying still – so I just lay back at dusk and held up the ipad and saw connect-the-dot figures emerge in the sky. The stars danced in the haze from the forest fire smoke along the coast – we were 6 months into the pandemic in the midst of a raging string of forest fires suffocating the state. Life was dystopic so why not try a substance to make it delightful? The sky was covered in pink, and I could have sworn the Milky Way was swaying. The stars twinkled startlingly. How silly, this science of made up names for constellations in the sky. An adult playing make-believe and convincing everyone else to do the same.
4. A collective awe took over all of us this month as bright and vibrant sky images from the ten billion-dollar Webb telescope were shared. We had seen space before, yes, but now it was vibrant, in high-def and infrared. Sepia colored smoke looked like mountains, and glittering stars had six pronged sparkles. The deep blue black of space was sharper, and the mist more ethereal. It’s hard to believe that our taxes funded this magnanimous dreamy project. As a child of the 80s, I remember how the Cold War and the Space Race influenced the American psyche – every kid was obsessed with becoming a NASA astronaut and asking for a telescope for our birthday. As a family, we would all gather to watch NOVA on PBS and then at school the next day we’d talk about it on the playground. As a society, we had a collective imagination on the urgency to discover outer space. It’s hard to believe now, with the way White Supremacist Anti-Science Flat Earthers have taken over the public consciousness and federal government – but there was a time where we were all in awe of outer space together. This past month felt nostalgic for a time where we could all imagine the unknown jointly, stare into space in a collective dreamscape.
5. It’s time travel, looking at the sky. The further into space we can see the further back in time we go. Which mean, when aliens look back up at us, we are the future.
6. I don’t know if there is a way to describe this fascination for the stars that is uniquely of the generation of people who lived in the 80s and 90s. It was before the internet and our ability to instantly google question we might have of the universe and we had to simply sit in pure and simple wonderment. If persistent, we’d write down our questions and go to the library and search for a book that might have the answers to our questions. But that wonderment of being on the cusp yet still not knowing feels so particularly generational. All the wonderment that exists right now feels so specifically abysmal and apocalyptic – we forgot that not knowing was also inspiring.
7. I can’t stop thinking about Jay Shetty clip I saw a few months back where he talks about the Awe Effect. “When we look at beautiful landscapes,” he says, “we feel really tiny but we feel like we are part of something bigger…. Allow yourself look into the distance … and at the vastness of the sky - awe is accessible to all of us for free.” I believe the humans on this world would co-operate better if we all felt like we were tiny blips and a part of something bigger.
8. After a friend looked at the images of space from the Webb telescope, she said they looked like my paintings. I demurred, but truthfully, I had been looking at the images forever wondering how one would even paint something like that. My paintings were naïve and Mickey Mouse - that was Allah’s paintbrush right there. Does one use a spray can like the sidewalk space fantasy painters of the 2000s? Would watercolor and gouache be better to layer wispy transparent shades of a burnt sienna gaseous cavity? If this these images were captured with infrared technology then what is color in space, actually? How do you paint a twinkle?
9. “And He has subjected for you the night and day and the sun and the moon and the stars are subjected by His command. Indeed, in that are signs for people who reason.” Qu’ran 16:12
10. It is no wonder that the moon and star has become the symbol for Islam – topping minarets and domes everywhere.
11. I’m not sure when people started associating me with a star, or when I started associating myself with a star. My mom stitched me a cross-stitched shooting star which I had up in my bedroom when I was a baby. I was obsessed with The Little Prince cartoons as a kid. The five-point star was my doodle of choice. I had glow in the dark stars on my bedroom ceiling. I spent hours cutting cardboard stars and wrapping in foil to hang from the gym ceiling for our junior high prom. I wore punk rock star jewelry into the mosh pit as a teen. My nickname was nicknamed into Tazzy Star when I was 23 yrs old, after the 90s indie rock icon Mazzy Star. I’d take my favorite dates to Griffith Observatory to see the wall of stars (Hubble Telescope version, RIP). When I turned 29 yrs old, I tattooed three white stars on my inner wrist. For my 40th birthday, I made celestial goodie bags for all the besties. Now, I paint stars with metal paint pens in the night sky, often.
12. It’s such a silly L.A. girl thing, to be so enamored by stars. The light pollution and smog here make stars a luxury anytime I am able to escape. A run down of my favorite stars, though I know they are all the same —> Walking back to our dorms from “town” on Catalina Island, and seeing all the twinkly stars light our El-Nino-muddy path. The way the cloudy Milky Way dipped vertical into the Pacific Ocean in Big Sur last summer. Seeing shooting stars nightly while soaking in a summer hot tub in Aspen. Camping in the Mojave National Preserve for a Star Party and holding a flashlight wrapped in red plastic while looking through all the telescopes. Having our microbus drive through the marshes outside of Dhaka and seeing fireflies merge with the stars over the paddies. On the darkest and stillest nights, sitting still on the Blue Mountain dock where the reflection of the stars in the glassy lake made it look like you were floating in the sky, stars above and below.
13. A heartbeat has been detected in the universe. A strange and persistent radio signal from a far-off galaxy. Scientist don’t know what it is – and the rest of us just have to be okay with that.
14. Mom seeking out Cassiopeia night after night and pointing it out to me was never about the memorization of constellations. It was about teaching me to seek out awe, and having access to seeking out awe outside my door, everywhere I went. The accessibility of being amazed, always.
15. Outer space is so so alive and we are all so so small.