On Looking At the Night Sky Without My Glasses

Wow. There's a lot going on out there. Stars, satellites, maybe even a space station? I had gotten up to pee and was sitting on the toilet looking out the bathroom window. A blinking body of light was drifting by at that very moment, its own silent parade. (Maybe not silent if you were nearer to it; maybe its sound is reverberating through the galaxy even now, echoing through time and heaven; maybe the universe is ringing with music...)

All around were scintillating stars, scattered like salt from a shaker, and a couple of meteorites streaked by. The blackness was strewn with glitter and glimmer, and my squinting only smeared the sparkles into broader blurs of light, and from my perch upon the porcelain I was overwhelmed with wonder.

It took a long time to get back to sleep afterwards, but I didn't mind.(Image: Starry Night Over the Rhone by Vincent Van Gogh)You might also be interested in this post about the Perseids, or  Diamond Nights