You know why I like looking at stars? It’s their odd mixture of constancy and inconstancy. I can see them no matter where I am – in a tiny bedroom in Bohol, from my boardinghouse window overlooking USC Main, from a spacious terrace only paces away from the Indonesian Consulate in Davao, and even now, from the narrow MIT balcony looming over a street that never seems to sleep. It doesn’t matter where I am. I see stars; and the gaseous masses that they are, they burn and glow so hard I can see them wherever I go, millions of light years away from where they are.
Stars don’t stay rooted to the spot. They move. Each time the earth turns around, we see a different star. There is one star, however, that stays rooted to the spot. They call it the north star, and for hundreds – perhaps even thousands – of years, people have used it to find their way home.
My grade school teachers did not teach me this idea of celestial movement, however. You did. You taught celestial navigation to Nautical students; and long before I fully understood the birth and death of stars, you already taught me how to estimate a ship’s position using the angles between objects in the sky. Do you remember that, pa? Do you remember how I used to help you check plotting sheets – my then eleven-year-old hand looking tiny and lost amidst those huge sheafs of papers? Latitude is measured either upon the sighting of noon or the north star. So is longitude. Now, this north star, they call it Polaris. In books and movies, men who take frightfully long journeys tell their beloved: I will always find my way home because you are my true north.
You know, I used to think that about you. You are my north star; and it doesn’t matter how years, people, things, and the topography of Bohol change. For as long as I have you to look for, I will never lose my way.
It’s a hell of a time to be thinking about physics, I know. I was never much good at the sciences. Then, too, you’re an ocean away, and we have never really talked – at least not of things that matter.
But think about this for a moment: these stars whose constancy I’ve always admired? They are so far away by the time their light reaches the earth, some of them are dead. They go nova, petering into a red giant until they eventually collapse into a black hole. In fact, some of the stars I’m gazing at right now may be dead and gone, and all I could be looking at are lights with nothing beyond them – fire without actual heat, beauty without substance.
So, I’m thinking:
What if the north star were like that? For years, people have trusted it to lead them home, to help them get their bearings; but what if, like many of the stars dotting the sky, it also died? What if it isn’t real anymore, and while we see light, there really isn’t anything there but a hole in the sky? How will we find our way home, then?
Again, it’s a hell of a time to mull over physics. But dearest papa, I am just like you. I am all things changeable, starry-eyed, impassioned, and impatient. I need an anchor to keep me moored. That is why I have always admired the stars. There is a certainty to their dance, a blueprint to their movement across space. Governments could topple, tuna could be served grilled or sizzling; but the stars would all still be up there – castor and pollux, the big dipper, andromeda, alpha and beta centauri.
You are that for me – a star. You are my north star; and even though it’s difficult to think of one place as home, wherever you are is where I shall head back to, no matter how far I wander or how long I stay away.
I know it’s faulty science to even consider this. But what if the north star were no different from all the other stars? What then, pa? What then?
Constancy and stars, physics and love, light years and melancholy – at 12:02 in the early morning, they all come together and converge where it hurts.
Above me, the sky remains immense and unbroken. The stars remain beautiful, unyielding, and certain.
Posted in Big Sad, Family, Heartstrings, Letters, Quietly beautiful things |
Hi! My name is Chin, and this is where, to quote Jane Austen, I "run mad and as often as I choose."
