Written by Daniel Henry

Chris started whaling in laughter at the mess I had just made. Apparently, I do not have the kind of tolerance to chug a couple of shots of Evan Williams’ all at once. When I did, I threw up, but in a most peculiar fashion. First, I leaned back and looked up. I held my hands on my mouth tightly as I felt the gushing thrust of blended liquor and Doritos hurling upward in my throat. As the filthy flotsam swirled about and pressurized the inside of my mouth, I lost the ability to hold it all in. Forth sprung from my fingers bright orange trails of alcohol and cheese until finally, I deposited the remaining expulsion onto my shirt. I quickly grabbed my shirt and cradled it in my arms as I would any other new born. I walked outside and threw it upon the earth. Chris directly addressed me with terms such as Vesuvius and St. Helens a great deal during the remainder of the evening.

At that point, I decided to go outside—and Chris agreed—because, even though I had not spilt a drop on the floor inside, the risk at that point appeared to be too high. I slowly stumbled through the family room of my parents’ house to the back door that led outside to the patio under the old deck. The air was crisp and cool. I could faintly hear the sounds of some dogs barking in the distance, across the creek, in a neighboring subdivision. The atmosphere of the surroundings, the environment, seemed to play out in slow motion. I felt as if it could have even been fictitious. I meandered about in a dazed but wild state through the trees and rock walls and garden hoses, with Chris following behind. I settled upon the old marred brick wall that enclosed a large flowerbed on a slope beside the house. It was about three and a half to four feet high, so we could sit and dangle our feet over it without too much concern for falling off.

Having just finished reading The Two Towers by Tolkien, I was constantly thinking about the story of my life, and what I could garner of his wisdom from his words—to help me find my way amongst the many roads diverging in my yellow wood. I was suddenly blind-sided by the concern that we all get from time to time about what we think are the real troubles in our lives. What happens if I don’t finish school? What will I do if I do finish school? Do I even really want a college degree? Why am I lingering on in darkness and in doubt? I felt my strength fading. I let my mind wonder as I stared into the fading trees. So outside, we drank whiskey and ate chips, in the gathering dark.

Chris and I, together, solemnly reflected on bad times, like when Steve got kicked out of school for not making the grade, and when I got kicked out on a disciplinary suspension, and the whole "What were you doing on 9/11?" thing. We chuckled aloud at the hilarious things, like when Steve opened the passenger door on my car and puked all over the road, on campus, right in front of everyone walking in from the parking lot, and the time Steve got alcohol poisoning, urinated in Daniel Raskind’s sink and then passed out in the stairwell. It sounds disgusting, but in our age, it’s what stayed with us.

I kept my concern of being one traveler to myself for I knew I would be telling it with a sigh.

Eventually the drinking slowed down as Chris and I descended into a state of intense relaxation, dizziness and absolutely no sense of urgency. The questions and concern for my life still weighed heavily on my mind although I had already thought not to worry about the future and about questions I could not possibly answer. I felt as though I was being assured by something beyond myself of this. I got to my feet and began the march, up the weathered blocks of granite stone, to the driveway and on to the front yard. Chris crawled a foot or two and came to his feet as well. We made our way, through the trees and through the night as my memory, consumed in self-evaluation, made its way through time and space. I finally found myself in the front yard, near the street that connected to Highway-155 and to the rest of the civilized world, before I knew it. I promptly fell to an arm-propped lying position and darkness took me.

The grass was wet, and dampened my khaki pants. I looked over at Chris, who had previously collapsed to an Indian-style seat upon the dewy blades of living carpet and who seemed to be having slight difficulty with balance despite the relative ease of maintaining it in such a position. I opened my mouth and roared in laughter as I observed him swaying about in disarray as though he had just walked off of a centrifuge. In retaliation, he raised his fist to the sky, with a drought of any certain alacrity, and threw it into the air with all his strength such that it happened to collide with my right arm.

I lost the energy to remain upright and fell completely down to the soil. Something happened then, as I physically lay upon the Earth, which I will never forget. My oily unwashed hair weaved into the saturated grass. I felt a cool, almost chilling, breeze about us even though the air was of a reasonable temperature. Every cricket and frog and cicada left a signature on my memory, as if time wasn’t really passing. I swept my hand across the grass and felt the sensation of the plants grazing the skin of my palm. I looked to the stars. Even though I didn’t see anything more than white points of light, it was as if I could almost hear them speak.

For some reason I was in an epiphany and I did not know why. What was I getting out of this? It seemed like the very order of the universe itself was opening up to me and I could not (or would not) see what it felt I needed to see. The air around me felt viscous and soupy. The sounds of the animals around slowed and slowed. The grass became sharper and the breeze became colder and all the things on my mind seemed to fall into the abyss of my subconscious. The stars became brighter and more defined.

As a child, I had looked to the sky several times and marveled at the stars. I have taken my fair time to study their formations and their measurements and their meanings in arts and sciences I have been taught. But to just simply watch, for hours, is more than that. They sing a silent song about something long since passed that is far grander than me or the Earth or anything else we humans know. I find myself content in that. The moment shared between the stars and I could have lasted as long as the stars would allow, for I found no will to leave them.

From the sciences we have created through the ages or learned through the lifetime, we know that light can only travel so fast. When one looks upon the stars, one sees the swirling balls of gas, burning by the fusion of the atom, appearing together. The canvas of the sky is two-dimensional in our eyes. But stars, in reality, are much more apart than they seem; some are much closer to us than others. And, since light can only travel so fast, when one gazes upon the stars, one does see all the universe about them, at different times all at once: a history book predating the creation of the Earth, with chapters scattered about nebulas, clusters and other galaxies. This book turns its own page. And like every good story, it means something different to all who read it. There is no way to gain the vantage of your peers completely; we lack the ability to communicate with such accuracy or precision. What one sees is his own.

My life, as important as it is to me, is not that important to the universe. Physics, emotion, literature, art, love, life and death will continue without me. But whenever I look to the stars and glimpse that masterpiece—that work of irrefutable glory, power and beauty—presented the way it is just to me, I think that maybe, just maybe, the universe is concerned with me from time to time. I belong to something greater than myself; we all do.

All the proof you need is in the stars.

As I finally began to fall asleep in the wet grass, Chris rose up from the drainage ditch a yard or two away. He begrudgingly walked over to me and poked me until I would give him the attention he wanted. As I tried to lift myself from the ground, he reached down to me and pulled me up. As we began the trek back around the house I looked back up to see the stars again, but they were almost gone. The sky was a fresh dark blue—growing lighter by the second—and the chirps of birds beginning their daily business polluted the air. I would have to wait to read the sky again.

As we rounded the last corner after the weathered granite stone steps, down the hill, past the large brick flowerbed, we stood on the patio outside the back door and faced the East. The horizon was a golden soup of orange, blue and cirrus cloud that forced me to stop walking. Was it possible that the sky was not through with me yet? Chris looked over to me and then over to the horizon, and he leaned against one of the long metal poles, dug deep into the cement of the patio and supporting the weight of the old deck. The edges of the trees glowed in anticipation of sunrise.

Like a flood upon the vastness of the Earth, the light struck me and forced me to blink and squint. Its power was awe-inspiring as it lit the entirety of all the land we could see. When I tried to look, as I did a couple of times and briefly, I saw streaks of light jetting out from the corona. I noted the deep, dark, shadows cast by the sun’s gaze over the back yard. I marveled at the refraction of the light from all sources of water in view, both flowing and stagnant. It was as if it all were an entire symphony of sight. All this thunderous power was coming from a single star: our sun. In the entire universe it was unique to me; it was one traveler.

I am a single star in my civilization. As indistinct and ubiquitous as our sun is to the countless galaxies am I to my species. But like the sun, I believe, I too can be awe inspiring. I too, with the will to do so, can be noted and marveled upon and be a thunderous symphony of thought and imagination. Are the problems I face in my trials with becoming an adult really such cause for concern? Perhaps they are not. Maybe I should hold more closely to my heart my irrefutable power to make whatever I whim of myself and my life.

The sun crept higher and higher into the sky, and the jetting rays of light became less powerful. Chris appeared to have nearly lost himself while basking in the sunlight. His eyes were closed as if he was asleep, but I knew he was not. He suddenly took a great, strong breath of the morning air and looked to me and asked, "So this is the day?"

I turned from the East, and followed the light across the trees, through the creek, and over the garden, past the rusting unused swing set, and beyond the borders of my parents’ land. Chris followed my view to see what I was looking at, although I was not looking at anything in particular at all. I was consumed in yawning and then replied, "Yeah, sure is."

I withdrew from the sight of the land beyond to a simpler view of the path that led from the patio out past the gazebo, swinging around the garden on its way to the creek. My eyes also traced a path on the weathered granite stone steps, passing by the large brick flowerbed embedded in the slope, that lead to the driveway. And both that morning equally laid, in leaves no step had trodden black. After a moment of silence, he shrugged his shoulders, looked back to the rising sun, and said, "Well then, happy 20^th birthday, dude."