January 23, 2014

Shooting Stars

Maybe it’s my kickboxing high, but when you think about the life spans of all the souls on earth, from a spaceship’s perspective, their beginning, middle, and end might as well be as quick as a picture flash. Or like fast clips in movie trailers.

Whatever you prefer.

My life, would also be a picture flash, that one second on the screen when the car blows up in a blockbuster movie trailer, that shooting star you thought you just saw. Its entire story will be swallowed up one day, along with the entirety of literature, a million umbrellas, and every single Jack in the Box. Next would come the neighbor’s harmonica, the bottomless ocean.

A gazillion squished spiders.

Life is not as serious as tedious people make it out to be. Our problems only seem big because we can’t see the big picture. We only know that the trees are taller than us, and more or less what the person standing next to us has to say. We can’t see anything for what it really is, how inconse-fucking-quential Los Angeles traffic is, or the absolute size of this Earth ship. We’re in the middle of a freakin’ FLASH! Time slows down if you think about the right-this-second and the POOF of our existence from outer space.

And astronauts know this.

They must know this, because when they look down on earth they can see the big picture. They see our entire existence as a vessel, as a ship, circling a distant lighthouse that every so often flashes light, then dark, then light, and dark again. And from up there in the inky murk I doubt they can see that our intelligence was ever insulted, that our airbags never went off, or that we ever went a week without sleep.

But if they could see our life spans come and go, I’m sure they’d look a lot like flashes. Winks. Blips of lightning in the distance, or shooting stars that you’re not even 100% sure were there.

(Soundtrack to this post)

Monique Muro

Monique is an exceedingly happy human from LA. She runs the blog A Novel Quest, and writes. A lot.

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