Katie stared at the night sky. It was a majestic sight. The celestial empire stared back with infinite splendour and infinite indifference. She felt like a vagrant, an intruder, a condemned exile poised on the mountains outside a vast and enchanted city from whose magical precincts she was barred forever, compelled to gaze forlornly at the countless spots of light that shone like windows in a cosmic skyline.
She could only dream of the wondrous events and only vaguely guess at the vibrant pulse and energy of all that took place within the bourns of that astral metropolis. From her position as a galactic outcast she could only speculate about the scintillating ideas and profound conversations and deep thoughts that were seemingly forever foreclosed to her.
She knew for every second she looked up, there, out there in the vastness of space a new star was lighting up for the first time, emerging from a nebulous cloud of super-heated gas to flare up and illuminate its cosmic neighbourhood for the first time in aeons. She also knew that for every second that passed, another star would die out in a colossal explosion. She knew each one of those stars was a crucible, churning out heavier elements essential for life and flinging them across the universe in their final death throes.
Hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen are the most common elements in the universe. Atom for atom, the most abundant elements in the human body are hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and nitrogen. She realized then with growing awe that she and all humans are literally star dust; she was made of the very same heavier elements that were first formed in the heart of stars. She knew then that the universe was in her and she was in the universe.
The enormity of the thought overwhelmed her. She instinctively felt small and insignificant. All her dreams and hopes and inspirations suddenly seemed conceited. She realised she was but the merest of daubs, the simplest of slurs, the slightest of brush strokes on the eternal canvas of time and space.
She stared into the mysterious depths of deep space. Was it she who was contemplating the universe, or was it the universe—made self-aware through the coalition of organic matter over billions of years—that was contemplating her, and therefore, in effect, contemplating itself contemplating itself? Was she part of a metacognisant universe? She had no clue what the answer was or whether there ever could be an answer. She felt like she was trapped in a spindle pulling in bewitching fibres of golden fleece and silver flax and refulgent silk to twist it all round and around into one thick black thread that wrapped itself round her mind and shrouded her soul.
She thought of the oriental story about a tribe that wondered about eternity. They followed the actions of a magical bird that once every millennium would fly to the top of a mighty mountain and rub its beak on the summit and disperse a few flecks of soil from the top. After countless epochs and even more aeons, the mountain had finally been leveled to the ground by the bird’s action. The people of the tribe were still no closer to eternity than they were on the first day the bird had flown to the mountaintop.
