Chapter 1 

I had spent one summer on an island in the northwest, away from city lights and haze, looking at the stars as though they were old friends. I lay in a small meadow with a rock for a pillow and thought about it some. I suppose we were supposed to do this. We faced the universe and didn’t have to go searching for it. At that time it was very opaque. Was there life in the universe? It had to be proven that was my answer at that time. “Mrs. Farley claimed she had been abducted by aliens and been violated in a sexual way.” Well, did you believe her? “Craft spotted doing zizzags at a million miles per hour by Korean fisherman.” Did you believe him? Now I could say that their intuitions were headed in the right direction but they were still too roped to their silly selves that wanted to feel wanted or unique. Perhaps the stars were nothing more than signposts, infinitesimal horizons into something else. Perhaps the forces we thought so absolute were mere illusions created by our instruments and ignorance. I didn’t think that in the lovely meadow that summer I didn’t have the experience at that time.

David Eide
January 24, 2014