December 10, 2011
then I yelled at my dad
“It’s amazing to think all the water on this bus when during a lifetime each star makes a single ounce.”
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- Joel Bernstein: I know right?
- Rick Neece: Being nice is a dainty way to put it.
- Rick Neece: Hey Cristopher? Who cried “uncle” first, at the end of your ten-year stand-off? To quote my...
- Michael Smith: Ours is the kitchen.
- Amy Mabli: That’s what happens when you give the dogs the bed.
- Deron Bauman: Sweet Jesus.
- Michael Smith: Don’t we all.
- Pam: I have a story coming out soon in a ‘little mag’, Chicago Quarterly Review. An old friend recently...
- Pam: And I thought, somedays, that my work was meaningless…
- Pam: I remember Eggleston at the Art Institute in Chicago a couple years ago. He was elegantly dressed in a dark suit...
- Christopher Walken: Hey Clusterflockers, Realize y’all are hurting. I’ve been a really close friend of my...
- Marco: This works pretty well in mobile, more so in iOS
- Michael Smith: It was not the intent of management to imply all sissies are “namby pamby”. Management was...
- Rick Neece: I take umbrage with the term “namby pamby.” Some sissies are fierce.
- Carole Corlew: Shelia. Happy no big deal day. I would start your very own post but this phone is in semi rebellion.
I am wondering, Lifetime of a star or human lifetime?
In this case, it was the lifetime of the star.
I didn’t even know stars made water.
Time confuses me.
Up bright and early for the Starvest. We traveled further each year, hopping from system to system in the rickety ship we’d pieced together. In order to keep needs low, artificial water had been rationed since before I could remember, but most of our days were spent gathering the real kind from the seemingly endless brimming galaxies. It got tough to even see stars for what they were after a few years, large gaseous rounds or small immovable solid objects. You just start calculating, as soon as you land how much you can gather. Bryn asked me the other day if we’d ever return to a star she particularly liked. I had never even thought of that possibility. Stars were simply starvested and we moved on, sending back smaller, heavily guarded vessels with the liquids to be counted and stored. The rich could afford the real stuff, but Bryn, my father and myself were given only a small measure on the anniversary of our birth. Father carefully saved his, hoping someday to trade for better parts or perhaps land on Home Planet. I taste the smallest sip every year, feeling the lightening quick effects of even the lightest drop for days, smooth against the tongue, giving courage to the heart and clarity to the mind, and then put my portion with his. Bryn asked why we tried so hard since more work just meant more star water for others, but she’s too young to understand that there are limits to this universe and there’s only a few more years left to gather. New stars are born to replace the old ones that have been harvested, but not quickly enough and they won’t even be ready when my ten-thousandth granddaughter is born and scraping the skies.
Oh, Amanda.
I love you, Amanda Mae.
Thank you, dear hearts!