paranoid android

at a fall astronomy lecture, i took some notes that i found in a drawer i throw old journals in. all my life on little scraps of paper in 2 drawers.
shit.

that day i learned about the life-span of stars, considered the origin of the universe, and understood the logistics of sending information through space. i had the normal feelings of insignificance. and at the same time, felt connected.
stars have a life span.
they are born, live, and die.
just like us.

the sun we revolve around is half way through its life cycle. the damn thing will be dead in a few billion years. and so will we.

what struck me next is that NASA continually sends messages to places light years away. some of the smartest people on the planet are trying to connect with little scraps of cosmic communication that will NEVER get to anyone while humans are on earth. we will all be so dead that sending it doesn't matter.

in those drawers, i also found the scraps of my last marriage counseling session. the therapist made us write down 10 things we loved about each other. our in-class assignment was touch the other person and read the list of 10.

i was so many light years away from him that i literally almost laughed when he read his to me. that was the last time i said i love you, and i said it from an out-of-body, outer space place.

tangled in the astronomy notes, i found his list of 10. like the brightest minds in science, he had written a hopeless message. and we were so dead that the sending has never mattered.