Automatic Starry Night

I passed through my backyard tonight on my way to retrieve a folder I had left in my car which was parked in the back. It was a brisk and breezy evening. With the folder securely in my hand, I walked back along the paved brick path toward the door of my house, and stopped, in the middle of it, to look at stars. The sky was hazy and the stars were dim. Then I recalled one evening in my nineteenth summer, we were on the top of a hill in Miyagi after a night of campfire and games, we were all walking back to the camphouse when I looked up at the sky, and saw that the stars spilled over the sky as if the stars that had always been there were now visible because we were now on a hill, much closer to the sky. The stars were chunky too, like bite-size silver pebbles, each with texture and taste.

"I've never seen so many stars in the sky before," I said.

Everyone agreed. And I felt it was a sort of gesture from above, like setting the scene for these happy people in such a special evening, as if saying these people deserve to see this so they could remember tonight for the rest of their lives. At least I never saw stars like that again since.

Then I fell back to now, my paved brick path, my backyard, my home before me, the kitchen lights, time to go back inside. I asked myself if I could reproduce the scene of that very starry night. The kind of stars, maybe. The kind of people, probably not, maybe not even the place, no way. But the kind of light-heartedness, the kind of capricious hopefulness, I think I can.