NEW PALTZ— Local sources report that the stars look “fucking amazing” tonight and that you should really go outside and check it out.
“It’s so beautiful,” stated Victoria Sinclair, 21, a student at SUNY New Paltz, referring to the nightly display of the cosmos that has dazzled mankind for millenia, inspiring resonant mythological tales around the primordial campfire and sparking our scientific curiosity that began with dutiful observation and culminated in the still awesome feat of manned space travel.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen it so clear,” said Jacob Gruben, 24, a sound engineer and guitarist, puffing on a joint at a parking area on State Routes 44&55 while gazing upward with childlike wonder. “Seriously, go out and look.”
The spectacle of numberless stars, moons and planets — each as real as our own — arrayed across the firmament and stretching into the mind-bendingly infinite beyond, can be viewed each and every clear night by rich and poor, just and unjust alike, as free to all as the oxygen we breathe and the sun that warms and illuminates all things. Perhaps it is this easy availability, this embarrassment of riches, that fails to stir your interest. And yet, was Emerson not right when he observed: “If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God!”
“Make sure you dress warm. I’ve been out here almost an hour in just a hoodie and I am shivering,” said Sinclair, lost in contemplation of the immensity of space and time, and how, viewed in these terms, insignificant are our national boundaries and daily political squabbles, and how clear it is that we must unite together as one people to master our inner tribalism, eliminate nuclear weapons, convert all energy to renewable sources, and explore the universe together.
As of press time, these reports have not persuaded you to move from your position on the couch, half watching an old series on Netflix you’ve seen a million times and distractedly playing on your phone.