Lost Amidst the Murky Purple Sea (On Contemplation)

The number of times I have seen a starry sky have been few and far between. The first was at Pyramid Lake. We had gone to watch a meteor shower, which began late into the night. The stars filled sky, the meteors burned out, and we huddled in the cold appreciating the beauty of the universe.

In Los Angeles stars are few in the sky, the occasional constellation shows itself,  but the rest are lost amidst the murky purple sea that we call night.

The second time I saw such a sky was years later nearly halfway around the world. The place was a village named Titsmayri, east of the city of Kapan and across the Armenian border, in the contested region of Zangilan.

We were visiting my father's cousin, Nazaret (affectionately known as Nazo), a man who had moved to the region from Beirut, Lebanon as a show of nationalism after the cease fire between Armenia and Azerrbaijan.

His home was portable domicile given to many settlers, raised on stilts to avoid flooding from rain. In front was a garden, dried and overgrown, that had somehow managed to produce two watermelons the size of baby fists. Local dogs and cats would walk through the garden at their leisure, occasionally detouring to the porch for some rest.

Then the night came and everything went black. Fire from the metal square Nazo called the barbeque lit up the front, attracting mosquitoes and flies, and creating a dancing shroud upon the trees and bushes that surrounded us.

As the fire began to fade and the others went to sleep, I remained outside. The sky was alight, the stars moving, worlds colliding. I began to contemplate my life, measuring myself against the whole of the universe. I felt small and insignificant, my place in this unknown expanse uncertain at best. 

As my thought spiraled downward, I was interrupted by a cat who jumped on my lap, looked at me, raised it rear and meowed a demand to be petted.

By Chris Ware