Apologia

I was out on the balcony late tonight, the city was quiet, and I was watching small fishing boats move out through the harbor. Small red lights slowly moving across the black water. They looked like stars, forming temporary constellations in a mirrored sky; some were still, others shifted and swayed. From a different perspective, I imagine the stationary and moving boats switch places, new constellations coming into view, constellations I will never know.

Polaris is the north star. If you trace a line through the far edge of the Big Dipper you will find it, far enough away to stay nearly true north, yet bright enough to guide a traveler at night. There is no polestar in the southern sky, but one can approximate south by finding the Southern Cross, a constellation hovering out over the glacial horizon of Antarctica. The stars, the constellations they form, are motionless to us; they form constants against which we can measure our movement through space, through time.

The constellations are not static, however; they are not constant in our sky. Polaris is only humanity’s most recent guidepost to the north, the Southern Cross a new addition to the pole’s pursuit. Every few millennia or so the movement of the earth, the shifting of our planet through the solar system, necessitates a new star be designated our guide, a new constellation formed through which we divine that northern truth. Four thousand years ago the Egyptians and Greeks knew the Southern Cross, and Polaris was but one nameless pinhole in the ceiling’s fabric.

Four thousand years. Thirteen thousand years. One hundred thousand years. Humanity has named more polestars than years have passed since television. Yet hundreds of generations live and die under the light of that one star, that one constellation, that one escort. Some might note a feeling of insignificance in this, the grand process of life, the cosmic temporality through which everyone lives and dies. Instead I am amazed at the scope of humanity, at the universe-al timescale humans inhabit. But it only exists in history. It only exists in our creation of history. In this vast universal space-time, only that history gives meaning to our transit.