To Exist is Beautiful

I step outside to take Jesse on his midnight outing, my head looking down at things I need to look at, mind full of workaday minutiae. One more night in a week, month, year, life. Distractedly grinding the meal that comes along.

Then the purity of the night air hits my lungs like a bucket of cold water hits a sleeping drunk. And I look up.

It is the clearest and most magnificent night sky I’ve seen in years. Last night’s storm was the first real storm of the year…cold, windy and wet, it blew the hesitation right out. From beginning of fall to beginning of winter in one day, snow in the local mountains around L.A.

The air is so clean, the almost-full moon doesn’t cause any more haze than Mars or Betleguise, both of whom are nearby. The stars and planets are gathered and blazing in vivid electric blues, greens, reds and oranges. Hell, they’re having a rave. And to think I’d been oblivious to the invitation that’s been shouting to me from outside for hours tonight, just so I could be indoors sticking to my minutiae.

Until now.

Stepping outside into this timelessly majestic, indifferent and impossibly immense night leaves me reeling with the effort to get my head around how huge existence is, how unlikely MY existence actually is, and how miniscule we and our efforts are, in the unfathomable expanse and endlessness of the cosmos.

Whatever our wins, our compromises, our struggles, loves and losses…whatever ugliness our energies may dump upon the cosmic altar…whatever irrelevancies we waste our precious moment of life pursuing…this existence is incredible.

To exist is beautiful.

“I love you, universe” I whisper at the sky.