Saying goodbye to the stars

The quilt binds around my bare shoulders as I twist to face the window and see the stars. Midnight, and in five hours and twenty minutes my watch will beep, and I will get up and put on my backpack and leave Austria for home.

But that doesn’t matter when you’ve seen the stars.

The door to the balcony swings wordlessly—respecting those who dream while asleep, not while awake. No makeup, bare feet, hair loose, I greet the cow bells on the hills, and the mountains look up, brushing my gaze toward the crescent moon. In Paris, I watched it rise alongside the Eiffel Tower, full—now it steps back, making room for the stars.

Ten million stars, each a window God slit in the curtain of this world to allow the outside light of heaven through; now, He whispers, you can see home. If I spent ten minutes looking at God’s stars, heaven's stars, each night, I would love life more. In the city, we drown and build our own stars, flickering halogen that makes moths commit suicide, and humans too. A breeze blows off the mountain, and my face is cold to the touch.

Above me, an ivory rainbow. I haven’t seen the Milky Way for three years, since the farm, when my sister didn’t live on an island and there were four at the dinner table each night. On those evenings, Dad would bring us to the end of our driveway, a quarter-mile walk between fields of crickets, and teach us about Cassiopeia. I don’t see her now and don’t remember where to look.

Yet perhaps I’ve never seen the Milky Way, for even now when I look at her, she fades. But, then, of course she does; beauty doesn’t make sense and you can’t explain why it matters and it’s only on faith you see it at all. Beauty is the greatest builder of faith I know.

Above me, a shooting star, God’s prayer. And I wished on it, that I would always return to nights that are cold and skies full of stars, if not in this world, then in the next.

In praise of solid people

In Praise of Solid People

 ~C.S. Lewis, Spirits in Bondage

Thank God that there are solid folk
Who water flowers and roll the lawn,
And sit and sew and talk and smoke,
And snore all through the summer dawn.

Who pass untroubled nights and days
Full-fed and sleepily content,
Rejoicing in each other’s praise,
Respectable and innocent.

Who feel the things that all men feel,
And think in well-worn grooves of thought,
Whose honest spirits never reel
Before man’s mystery, overwrought.

Yet not unfaithful nor unkind,
With work-day virtues surely staid,
Theirs is the sane and humble mind,
And dull affections undismayed.

O happy people! I have seen
No verse yet written in your praise,
And, truth to tell, the time has been
I would have scorned your easy ways.

But now thro’ weariness and strife
I learn your worthiness indeed,
The world is better for such life
As stout suburban people lead.

Too often have I sat alone
When the wet night falls heavily,
And fretting winds around me moan,
And homeless longing vexes me

For lore that I shall never know,
And visions none can hope to see,
Till brooding works upon me so
A childish fear steals over me.

I look around the empty room,
The clock still ticking in its place,
And all else silent as the tomb,
Till suddenly, I think, a face

Grows from the darkness just beside.
I turn, and lo! it fades away,
And soon another phantom tide
Of shifting dreams begins to play,

And dusky galleys past me sail,
Full freighted on a faerie sea;
I hear the silken merchants hail
Across the ringing waves to me

—Then suddenly, again, the room,
Familiar books about me piled,
And I alone amid the gloom,
By one more mocking dream beguiled.

And still no nearer to the Light,
And still no further from myself,
Alone and lost in clinging night
—(The clock’s still ticking on the shelf).

Then do I envy solid folk
Who sit of evenings by the fire,
After their work and doze and smoke,
And are not fretted by desire.

In which I prepare to run away from an Austrian shopkeeper

They don't yell at you here.

Yesterday I was walking in the Old City in Innsbruck, Austria, shopping by myself, browsing through the dozens of tourist shops with their mini cow-bell keychains and Edelweiss jewelry. In Israel, that would have been a problem waiting to happen: the Old City. Narrow street. A young woman. By myself. Obviously a tourist. Going into a shop, of all the scandalous things.

The first store I walked into in Innsbruck, there was a man about my age at the counter, and all my Israel instincts went off -- as soon as he opened his mouth, I cringed and unconsciously prepared to fend him off and flee back out into the street while he shouted after me waving some scarf or souvenir asking whether I was single, if I wanted anything, how much could I afford, wasn't this scarf lovely, where was I from, how beautiful I was (and did I want some coffee?), how he had the best prices in town, and would I please come back.

As I mentally prepared for this, the Austrian shopkeeper looked at me calmly and said something that nearly made my jaw drop.

"Can I help you?"

I gaped. He wanted to help me?

I smiled and declined, then waited for more -- protests, exclamations about his skirts or scarves or silver jewelry -- but instead, he nodded and went back to his work behind the desk.

Amazing.

As I stepped back out into the sunny street, I realized I hadn't heard those words -- "Can I help you?" -- for weeks. I enjoyed the Israeli shops and culture -- I truly did -- but despite being only a few hours' flight from Austria, the mentality of each is worlds apart.

I am glad to experience both.