How It Happens

Sometimes a new world appears, dimly at first in the telescope you are using to watch your life. It is some kind of burned up star, it is a spaceship or a blimp, it is a dream or a ghost, it is anything but your life. You put the telescope down, go back to whatever it is you were doing. Your life does not change, but this thing is there, whether you look at it – fiery and new and old and scary and awful and awesome – or not.

The next time you look, you think it seems closer. You can make out people, little meaningless ants scurrying about…Is that one waving? Another, that one is running, for sure, but from what? What are they doing, these people in your life? It is too hard to tell, there is so much to do, so much you just don’t have an answer for, and you get tired. So you take a nap.

Then one day, you don’t need the telescope. Before you know what is happening, this life – your life – has invaded your window at night, a small burning planet or maybe a star, something that is so bright and so…undeniable, that you have no choice but to put down the book you were pretending to be interested in, turn off the bedside lamp, and just lie there, bathing in the glow of what you know is yours, what you know is finally here, finally yourself, finally your life.

Have you packed? Are you ready? It seems to be waiting for you, so many nights in a row it has appeared, insistent, lonely but beautiful, at your window. You do know it’s right, this lit-from-within thing from the future that’s come in search of you, and so you get up, put on your most comfortable jeans, throw a book in a bag, blow out the candles, tell him you love him, and – believing in something you have never seen before, not really, not up close, not for real, really – you go anyway.