Because I Do Not Know The Stars ======================== There is a certain failure in me for the things I do not know; a certain sadness in my heart for the things I like to think I would have learned by now. 1. Piano; I may have learned well had I owned one. But it is a very middle class thing to own; my parents could only pretend and could not come through on such things. I ended up with an older acoustic guitar which I can play, but despise. 2. But I do not know the names of stars; of arrangements up there. I could not tell you to look up on certain nights and be right about what you would see. It seems to me that I am forced to look without understanding all these pinpricks in velvet. But I would need to know just in case you would ever ask. 3. I do not know the latitudes of capitals; nor the location of most states, could not name chemical processes or tell you what habeus corpus was without checking a dictionary. But, I know a few good poets, don't you think, and I know you, enough to be a profession. I write love poems accidentally these days. 4. I seem to have picked up a lot of theory somehow: politics, art, even vague notions of economics. But I could not identify any painter, aside from the most famous; could not identify the 18th president; couldn't explain why I have no money left. I am learning more about the weather, because I want to look up and tell you if it will rain based on the shapes in the sky. This seems like a skill bordering on sorcery; but we always believe the men on TV. You should be able to have that faith in me. 5. Because I do not know the stars, will I have an excuse to look at the sky someday, with you? I will help you to count them, and I can tell you how if the number we reached was the national debt it would most likely not affect inflation, although the higher the number the smaller amount of stars would be invested into corporate growth and infrastructure. 6. I never knew how a car worked until last week. It is a series of explosions. Air mixes with gas, transforming into vapor, which explodes and moves a tiny piston. I have spent all my life on religion, could tell you anything you wanted about bahai to zoroastrianism but look, here is this miracle under my hood, every day unnoticed. Vapors moving pistons, moving me and you towards some hill where I will not be able to name the stars while I don't play a song on my guitar written just for you; but in every gesture is this intention: to bring any star down to earth for studying at your request. 7. The world is round, I know this. And the birds fly south, for the winter. I know that there is no way to measure the weight of fire and that you are afraid of moths. I know that light is both a particle and a wave; that you cannot measure the exact speed of a thing and its exact composition at the same time. And so your thoughts must travel at precisely 186,000 miles per second. -e. _______________________________________________ Five7Five mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/five7five
