February 8, 2012

• An ancient vigil

  When you look at the night sky you are looking at the ancient past. Some stars we see are already dead. We can’t see that they’re dead; they look like they are still there, burning bright in the universe, letting the whole world know that they are immortal. But some day the news will reach: they will blink in the sky for a few weeks, a last triumphant blast of light proclaiming the fact of their importance—that they were a star—before they fade into the darkness and their days of life, having lasted for billions of years, go unremembered by their grave of a silent black hole.

  If you look at the stars closely enough you can see your own death written in them just the same. Our present life, in fact, is much like theirs, an illusion that hides the fact that we are already dead. We see our fate, as sure as the brightest supernova, bursting in the night sky, a sad final bravura to the glowing life we had assumed we could keep. But now we finally see that we are living in the past, as already dead creatures merely walking towards our final end, blinking our eyes just as the those stars twinkle who the universe already knows to be deceased.

  Turn your eyes not from it, for it is all there is to see. You are here on earth, as sure as you wave your arm in front of you, but you also look down on yourself from the sky, seeing your current self as a creature long in the past of this one sure fact.

  The difference is that we are not stars, we are not public matter, for in that final moment you will be the only one to see your life story ignite and burn into dust.

  But your black hole of a grave will keep you a secret just the same.

  • 5:28 am
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