Number the Stars

My eyes flew open, and to my disappointment I found myself in an awkward and rather painful position in my seat. Only a few of the overheads were still on, splashing soft light into various corners of the cabin. The rest of the cabin was dark and quiet, and I was aware of the low rumble of the engines again. The guy seated next to me had fallen asleep in the middle of his movie and the images continued to flash silently in front of him.

I pulled out my Ipod to check the time but I caught myself. We were currently time traveling east to west at roughly 500 miles per hour over the Atlantic Ocean--there was no real time, no concrete point of reference to pinpoint exactly what time it really was. All I know was that we still had hours to go before the sun would roll over the horizon at our backs to overtake the speeding aircraft, and a few hours after that I'd finally trade this glorified can of sardines for another one bound for Los Angeles.

I was lucky enough to get a window seat for this flight home (because it's not everyday I get to see the world from 40,000 feet) and only hours before I'd watched the lights of Tel Aviv recede into darkness as the plane ascended into the night sky. I was a bit bummed that I wasn't able to get a seat with any of my friends but I had the sights of the window to keep me company.

I wonder what's outside now? I've never seen the sky at night--from for the sky. I quickly rebuked myself--it's dark outside; there's nothing out there to see. But now my late-night curiosity needed to be fed its midnight snack so I lifted the shutter a few inches and peeked outside.

I was right; it was dark. I could see the right wing jutting out into the darkness; the lights on the wingtip flashing steadily. Somewhere in the void I could just barely make out a dark line separating sky from sea, darkness above from darkness below. The faceless ocean below me was rather terrifying to look at, and even scarier to think about the absurd amount of water I was suspended above right now. I leaned further into the window to look upwards instead.

I let out a small gasp, my eyes widening to drink in the sight. The sky was smothered in stars. All I could see for as far as I could see was nothing but stars; bright, burning, frozen in the sky. I pressed my face further into the glass. The darkness above was teeming with countless little lights clustered in the overpopulated sky like beach-goers on a crowded beach. I tried to pick out the few constellations I knew but it was impossible to tell them apart, all lumped together like barnacles on a rock. It seemed like half the universe had stopped by my window just to say hello. It's no wonder the sailors of old could navigate by celestial lights. Twinkle twinkle everybody.

Suddenly I was thankful for my privileged position. I wasn't chained to the ground by gravity or confined to a bright, luminescent city full of artificial lights blocking out the beauty above; I was suspended between heaven and earth, between space and sky. Ocean and aircraft faded into the foreground as stars hung in nothingness, watching over me with bright and eager eyes as if they'd been there all along. Nobody moved--neither distant lights hanging in empty space nor speeding observer hovering above the small spinning rock hurtling through empty space. Instead we gazed and stared--I at them and them at me, through millions and billions of light years and galaxies and space dust and God knows what else.

At any moment, I half expected the burning spheres in the sky to stretch and elongate before my eyes and we would go hurtling through space at the speed of light just like in the movies. We would be home in an instant.

It all lasted but a few moments--one small soul on an airplane peering into deep space. I closed my mouth for the first time and whirled around in my seat but the guy next to me was dead asleep. He probably wouldn't have cared anyway. The entire cabin was asleep.

I sat there in the dark, my eyes full of light as I tried to harness the energy of the cosmos in that little chair by myself. Everyone around me was away in their own worlds and dreams, ignorant of the galaxies that lurked just outside of the window. I peeked under the shutter one more time to preserve the image in my mind for safekeeping. When I looked again the stars were still there, silent and watching, just like me.

I reluctantly bade my little slice of the universe goodbye. I slid the shutter closed, curled up in my seat as best I could, and slowly retreated back to the familiar world beneath my eyelids.

First Light

Mahktesh Ramon, Negev, Israel

My alarm goes off. Why am I awake right now? The sun's not even up.

Oh, that's right. The sun's not up.

Fun fact: the sun has risen 7,665 times (plus a few) in my twenty one years of life (yes I googled it)--yet I've never physically seen the sun rise with my own eyes.

I've seen my share of sunsets though. The big ball of orange quietly dips beneath the distant rise of the mountains or the sparkling expanse of the ocean or the steel towers of the city, falling so slowly you can sometimes see the dark line of earth consume the light little by little. Even in death, the sun paints the sky with a beautiful farewell to its patron Earth, a goodbye we might take more seriously if we weren't aware of the return that inevitably takes place a little less than twelve hours later.

I've seen the sun die many times, laid to rest with a beautiful eulogy stained in the sky above. But I've never seen its birth. Sunset isn't the same as sunrise. There's no commitment in a sunset.

It's five-something AM Israeli time. I should've worn actual pants--it's gotta be 40 degrees in this desert right now. But, tired and cold, I will myself to stay, weary eyes expectantly fixed on the horizon as I shiver with the few brave souls who have made this commitment with me.

A few minutes later, there it is--the first speckle of light climbing over the dirty mountains in the distance, like the first cry of life from the womb. Cameras and Iphones appear out of thin air to capture the moment, beeping and chirping as little machines try to do justice to an already perfect picture. After a couple attempts, I put my camera away.

And just like that, it's done. The Lion King-looking ball of light has freed itself from it's mother horizon and begins the day-trip across the sky that it has completed every single day since the beginning. I sacrificed three hours of sleep to witness five minutes of sun that I'd never seen before--five minutes of sun that happens every single day. 

I've been to a couple funerals; I've known people who have died. I think we all have--and if we haven't, we will. But I have never cried the way I cried when I laid eyes on my little sister for the first time. There's something about the way a bud opens into a flower, the way the soft shell of a robin's egg is slowly cracked and broken by the little bird inside, the way the sun appears over the earth for the first time that day. Out of darkness, light; out of nothing, something.

I didn't shed any tears while watching the sun ascend over the desert horizon that morning--and I've only seen one other sunrise since (it was also in Israel... because morning commitments are tough). But, as cliche as it sounds, I will never forget the first time I saw the birth of a day.

As I walked back to the hostel with the newborn sun warming my back, someone pulled up their Instagram. At the top of the feed were sunset pictures of the same sun from friends back home--from the other side of the world.

Sunrise, sunset.