The original date of publication for this essay is Sunday, October 25th. It is the 15th of what’s intended to be a year’s worth of essays, published on Sundays. That intention, like everything, is subject to change.
Last week’s essay: On Knoxville, Asheville, and the America We Do Not Know
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“To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! 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 which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature”
I have something of a crush on Emerson fanhood. I have long aspired to it. I have never achieved it.
This began in English class my junior year of high school. We read an excerpt from Nature, from which I’ve quoted above. I do not remember how much of Nature I grasped, in part because I don’t remember which excerpted part of parts we were given. I do remember the line about stars. It enchanted me.
Fancying myself something of a transcendentalist spiritually, zealous sixteen-year-old boy that I was, I began counting Emerson among my favorite writers, a distinction which became practical over the months to come as I decided that in college I would be, among other things, an English major, leading people to ask of my favorite writers and things of that sort. For Christmas, I asked for a book of Emerson’s essays. On Christmas, I received a book of Emerson’s essays. After Christmas, I failed to open the book I’d received of Emerson’s essays. And such began my crush, not on Emerson, but on the idea of being a fan of Emerson.
I regret to say that I still have not opened that book of Emerson’s essays, save a few isolated thumbings-through of the pages. I believe it sits on my bookshelf, looking like a chore for another time—a friendly chore; but a chore nonetheless. In college, I jumped at the opportunity to take a course with Emerson on the reading list. And I did, on one glorious afternoon at a picnic table amidst falling and fallen Indiana leaves, read Emerson, enchanted again by his aphorisms, especially amidst such a scene. But class approached, and I went inside, and then rehearsal drew near, so I attended rehearsal, and then, if it was Tuesday, there was a pressing engineering test to scramblingly equip myself for, and if it was Monday or Wednesday, there was a second rehearsal after the first as well as a pressing engineering test to scramblingly equip myself for, and I never finished the assigned reading (I got a good grade in the class, though, perhaps because while my professor and I privately disagreed on the merits of Howard Zinn, we shared some anger towards the NSA, and Edward Snowden came up in class discussion whereas Howard Zinn did not).
Last week, I was reminded of Emerson. Not by anything specific to Emerson, or possessed by Emerson, or pertaining to Emerson anywhere but in the minds of certain fans of his (or aspiring fans of his) who, because of the opening of that chapter of Nature, associate him with the stars.
The night sky catches us unaware sometimes. The rising moon. Stars through faint clouds. The Big Dipper. It startles us. Distracts us. Makes us say things aloud (like, “whoa, check out the moon”). During the day, yes, the sky can be quite pretty. Count me a fan of the daytime sky. But once the sun begins to dip, the sky takes on a magic, and it doesn’t let go until the last star has faded in the morning, so that only the sun remains. Yes indeed, Ralph, if the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how men would believe and adore. Yes indeed, how they would preserve the remembrance, for many generations.
I didn’t get once-in-a-thousand-years stars last week. I haven’t been around long enough to begin to conceptualize a starshow of that import. I did get once-in-a-few-years stars, though. We were getting out of the car at the place we were staying in Tennessee, a cobwebbed, creepy place, and as we stood up, I looked up, and while I don’t know enough to say for sure this is what I was seeing, from what I do know, context would suggest I beheld the Milky Way.
We don’t get stars like that in Central Austin. We get some stars. I point out Jupiter and Saturn a lot of nights on walks, my awareness of them a byproduct of a new year’s resolution a few years back to work out more, which led me not to work out more, but to instead wake up early enough to go to the gym, procrastinate long enough that I didn’t go to the gym, then sit at my desk and watch the stars fade before sunrise, which was arguably a better use of my time anyway. I didn’t continue this habit long before I gave up attempted gym visits and reverted to a later wake up time, but I did continue it long enough that I downloaded the Star Chart app, and while it clearly has yet to teach me to know if I “see the Milky Way,” I’ve referenced it enough to know that Jupiter and Saturn are currently in the south part of the heavens around ten or eleven at night, at least from my view here in Texas.
But as I was saying. We don’t get stars like that in Central Austin. We get stars, though, and they’re beautiful, and this deceives me, making me suppose that stars look like this everywhere, and that complaints about light pollution are overblown.
The qualification is not mine to say whether complaints about light pollution are overblown. But I can say that they get a lot of stars in that stretch of Tennessee. And those stars grabbed me.
I suspect other languages have a word of it—that comforting feeling of being small, of being minuscule to the most minuscule of things in the sight of the cosmos. Emerson spoke of that solitude (given his observation on the absence of solitude while reading and writing, it’s a bit funny to imagine his reaction to how not-alone we are in this century when we are ostensibly “alone”). So perhaps “solitude” is the best we can do.
Whether it’s solitude or something broader, it’s a liberating smallness. It’s an equalizing smallness. To be made so minuscule, and to be shown how minuscule everything else is—this is a comfort. Sure, it’s a terror too. The universe is big. Its life is long. We are small. Our lives are short. But it is foremost a comfort, perhaps because it comes from gazing upon something beautiful. Something heavenly. Something that, if it appeared once in a thousand years, would make us believe and adore.
And so, if we should be alone…as America’s good bard says:
Let us look at the stars.
Next week’s essay: Not On Coming Back, But On Coming Through
