There’s a line from Neil Gaiman’s classic comic, The Sandman, which has stayed with me over 15 years after I read it when I was younger. It comes from the incredible storyline known as “Brief Lives,” which can be found at your friendly, neighborhood comics shop.
The story involves the lead character, Dream, along with his sister, Delerium, looking for their missing brother, Destruction. Not only are all of these characters fans of names beginning with the letter “D,” they are all also essentially immortal beings, which leads to this memorable quote, spoken by the wayward brother, Destruction, as they walked through the garden at night.
“I like the stars. It’s the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they’re always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend… I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don’t last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend.”
I am not the biggest fan of the Sandman that you will find, but that may be my favorite quote in all of comics, and perhaps in all media. Those words have always resonated with me throughout many periods of my life. Today I found myself thinking of them again as I looked into the nothingness of the night sky.
Nothingness. Emptiness. No stars…at least none that I could see.
This is the one thing that has always bothered me about life in the city: sometimes I can’t see the stars. I have lived in a small town in farm country; I have travelled across big sky country; and I have sailed on the Bering Sea where there isn’t a light of a city for hundreds of miles. I have seen starry nights so spectacular that to simply look upon them is to forget anything that may be troubling you; instead getting lost in their brilliant, yet distant embrace.
They were not there tonight. I have come to realize something about myself over the years: I am sad if I cannot see the stars. I feel alone without them there. Here I am, living in “Space City,” and my night sky is drowned out by the dull glow of halogen lights and flare towers. A night sky of yellowish-brown; devoid of stars.
Believe me when I say that it is difficult being a conservationist working in the largest petrochemical refining area in the hemisphere. I am all too aware that the putrid brown sky blocking my stars is not the work of the halogen lights of the endless refineries alone. I know what is pumped into the air, and I am not foolishly idealistic enough to believe that we can just shut everything down and fix it. I am actually in my current job because of my belief in a better future. I took it so that I could work with technologies that could help to heal our world while still advancing ourselves.
Tonight I couldn’t help but wonder if we could ever do enough. I’ve already given up hope that I, alone, can make a difference; but I fear that the last, lingering shreds of that naive idealism may be fading: blotted out just like the stars which give me my illusion of permanance.
Tomorrow I will wake up and go back to work, and hopefully this spell of despair will have passed. Hopefully I’ll once again believe that I can do something to make a difference. Hopefully, someone else will, too.
It would just make me feel a whole lot better if I could see my stars tomorrow night.
Tin Foil Hats 