10,000 Flickers of Light

I think humans have always felt watched back by whatever is out there flickering in the distance. What excites me is what the imagination creates, not simply in explanation of what is there but also to explain or justify the feeling of awe and attachment that the heavens inspire.
—Tracy K. Smith

What transpires high above in the inky indigo heavens? For each grain of sand, 10,000 brilliant stars flicker in the night sky—10,000 of 200 billion trillion. While the moon glows a mere 238,855 miles away, the closest stars to Earth lie 4.37 light years away (one light-year is about 6 trillion miles). Maybe our infinite memories embed themselves in the stars—both the beautiful & the ugly. Maybe the gnarliest memories get celestially processed & cleansed to dazzle in the moonlight. Maybe visions morph in a golden realm of synesthesia (a kind of peyote dreamscape)—where music triggers luscious greens & hues of blue, accompanied by a palette of seductive reds— where amorphous shapes and silky textures beckon, where simple sounds elicit tingling sensations, and columns of numbers appear as intriguing people with whom we experience a mirror touch phenomenon.

Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen.
—Anaxagoras

I wonder if those inky heavens also host our disappearing acts. Athletes, actors, artists, writers, and other ordinary alchemists, find transcendence in the art of disappearance. The most decorated Olympian of all time, swimmer Michael Phelps, feels most at home in the water. “I disappear,” he says. “That’s where I belong.” Academy Award winning actor Holly Hunter believes, “Some actors say they don’t know themselves at all, and that’s why they act: because they can disappear into other people.” Actor, playwright, author, director and screenwriter Sam Shepard, whose career spanned half a century, thought, “most writers, in a sense, have this desire to disappear, to be absolutely anonymous, to be removed in some way: that comes out of the need to be a writer.” Award winning author Celeste Ng says, “I think one of the reasons I like fiction versus nonfiction is that I myself can kind of disappear from the story.” Consider the work of Salvador Dali, a master of visual synesthesia, whose surrealist paintings depict strange illusions of time and space, multiple angles of perspective, a symbolic blend of interior with exterior, and humans melded with object or animal. Often his work includes a figure who appears to disappear. Innovative photographer Duane Michals, whose sequential images create narratives that explore myths and mysteries claims, “Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be.”

If you made it this far, you’re now immersed in a piece without edges, so let’s take an aerial perspective in the spirit of the metaphysical. Here’s where UFOs zip into the realm of uncanny sightings. The more scientific amongst us float various theories of atmospheric phenomenon and the possibility of alien life. Or could it be ancestral choruses of chatter? Less extraterrestrial, but the 20th century’s most famous disappearing act, aviatrix Amelia Earhart took off from Oakland, California in May of 1937, in an attempt to be the first person to circumnavigate the earth around the equator. In addition to maps, compass, and the position of the rising sun, celestial navigation would be used to locate Howland Island, a small sliver of land in the South Pacific where she would touch down. On July 2, on the final days of her flight, her last transmission was heard at 8:43 am local time. Despite an extensive search by the U.S. Navy, Earhart and her plane were never seen again.

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.
—Helen Keller

So before I get sucked into a vortex or fly you over the Nazca lines in a single engine plane, I’d like to wish you visions of sugar plums or your sweetest desires this holiday season. I’d also like to invite you to my festive séance deep, deep in the night, but I find it glides with greater precision when I summon the spirits solo.

But—of your own volition, may you engage the enigmas of the vast indigo skies. May AI hallucinations never cloud your perceptions. May you conjure apparitions & orchestrate visions—visions of flickering lights in the ether, luminous blue veins of unlikely connections & the crimson heartbeat of unspoken covenants we keep. May you manifest your most fiery dreams for 2024 & beyond!