Disgusting, vile liar you are. You say you want… no, this is for the moan journal. STOP NOW.

Starlight shines on all of us, all the time. That's a better thought.

We just can’t see the stars in the daytime but they are there. As is the meteor shower  M and I lay on the driveway for several hours at 2am one clear August morning, marvelling at the burning hulks of alien rock smashing through the outer atmosphere as comet something-something Tally-Smithers? Whatever passed in its orbit, shedding pieces of violence. At some point it must run out of pieces, I think.  They streaked and shimmered in the night sky after moonset at 1:30am. Our bed of blankets on the hard stone only marginally softened the pain of lying on cement. But we endured, marvelling at the streaks of light and beauty. I don’t know anything about them,  just watched their death. Maybe somewhere some of them actually last all the way down to the ground, or the surface of the ocean, ending their astral journey with a hissing plop and eternal dimness resting on the sea bed.I  suppose we should count ourselves lucky that none hit us, or our house, town, country or any people anywhere. But the odds are astronomically small, forgive the pun.

I read that 5% of all outdoor dust, the stuff that collects on your windowsill, is stardust, the remains of the long fall through the atmosphere.  I wipe this down regularly and resist the impulse to save it.  I always have to remind myself that the remaining 95% is largely made up of leaf mould spores, insect body parts, human skin, the detritus of life.

Perseids.  They arrive every summer, like on holiday,  in their weird and eerie journey around the solar system. Moonlight, moonrise, moonset and gravity, the tidal dark force, atmospheric wind and solar heat. So much that fundamentally affects every aspect of our lives which we pay absolutely no heed to as we scramble around trying to make meaning. The attempt to endure is laughable in the face of all the evidence - even here on the earth it is irrefutable, even with all of our technological expertise. I’ve got the sum of human knowledge in my pocket  on my Google phone and so does everyone else. Still doesn’t do anything about my fundamental vulnerability and physical weakness. Even going down the street poses threats, nevermind mountains, lakes, oceans, earthquakes, volcanoes, lightning, tornadoes, hurricanes, mud slides, cliff falls, waterfalls, and ice. Still weak and vulnerable, yep.  Yet still marvelling at the immensity of the Universe.