Some of my finest hours in this profession have come at night. But be careful; if you share this passion, know that it calls for caution and some degree of secrecy. I had to find out the hard way. Before I left town, I was often seen strolling about after sunset, or worse, sitting alone in the dark. I was reported to the authorities as a suspicious character. Police would pull up beside me as I paced the sidewalks, their  lights arcing across the bay windows of nearby homes where residents watched  furtively  through the curtains. Questioning and harassment invariably followed. My peace was routinely shattered by these intrusions. Paranoia began to gnaw at me, and I could not regain my composure. No sky-gazing benefits accrue to one who is constantly looking over the shoulder.

If you go at night, go alone.  Leave town.  Don’t trespass on anyone’s property. Find a place that is twenty miles from the nearest human being.  Sit down, wait, and watch. Be patient; you may have to wait through the night.  But if you have been intent and watchful, the night sky will generously reward you.  Tell no one where you have been or what you have seen.  If you are faithful, you will discover much more wisdom taking root in these solitary night sessions than in daytime sky-gazing.

It helps to remember, too, that impatience is a sky-gazer’s most crippling vice. I am still struggling with this lesson. Sky-gazing is an exercise in the study of nothingness. I’d save myself a great deal of grief if I’d learn to watch the skies without the intent of seeing something in particular. Under this vastness, expectancy is like a sickness. The fever can begin from the germ of a thought: What am I doing out here wasting my time? There is nothing to see. The sky is still there. The clouds are still floating by; the swallows fly.  What else is new?  Then the restlessness sets in. An infection of restlessness is a swift and ruthless thing. It lays waste to peace of mind and makes communion with the sky hopeless. And I come away in a petulant anger, blaming the sky even when I feel the hollowness of the pretext. Days like these, when heaven and earth seem to stand at odds, make sky-gazing seem futile and, worse, stupid.

You’re going to have your share of days like that, days that make you want to quit. Don’t. Giving up is not an option; I can’t emphasize this enough. The toll is too heavy. If you turn away from the sky, every tone of the terrain will remind you of what you have given up: the mirages, the reflections from still waters, heat waves on the horizon, the shadows cast by the landforms. You will forfeit your passion, but you won’t be able to forget it. It’s something like a living death. You’ve made an irrevocable decision in becoming a sky-gazer; you must resolve to follow through.  

Feel the wind picking up? The storm is close. There is one task left for you: try to take these fragments – the nimbostratus, the altocumulus, the cirrus – and make them whole. It feels like chaos, I know, but you have to trust that it is not.  If it begins to seem overwhelming and you feel you are losing your bearings,try this: single out the nimbostratus. Imagine it as a strain of music. Try to recognize the notes of the passage. See the pitch, the meter, the scales and modes it runs through. See it as a melody. Feel what it sings to you. Shift your attention to the altocumulus, and do the same for it. Then the cirrus. Bring these three living melodies before your mind’s eye and hold them there – gently, like you were cradling a swallowtail in your palms.

Now, take faith in the powers above you. The rest is out of your hands. All you can do is wait and watch – watch for a moment of fusion, a moment when the gestalt suddenly comes alive.

I can’t say I’ve ever seen this happen for anyone. I don’t even know if it’s possible. But I get the feeling that magic can happen here, the kind of magic children believe in, that if your faith is pure enough, the imagined will come to pass. I believe there are harmonies out there waiting to happen. I believe in melodies that coalesce into fluidic chordal progressions, each triad melting into the next, and I believe that through it all the melodies run, playing off one another in a counterpoint that puts Bach to shame, each keeping its individuality like a brightly-colored thread woven through a tapestry. There are moments when the enchantment that would bring all of this off doesn’t seem very far away at all. And sometimes I sense this magic wouldn’t be content with just weaving its spells in the skies; it would work a permanent change in a sky-gazer’s vision as well. No one could witness these things without becoming a seer.

There should be a warm spot centered behind your eyes. Feel the glow? The inner dawn. I can feel the warmth from where I stand. The ancients say there is a sunrise in that world behind the eyes. I do not know the truth of this. If there is such a thing, you’re a prime candidate.

I can’t teach you anything more; dawn is as far as I’ve ever gotten. There’s light enough that I can see what darkness I’ve come out of, but there hasn’t ever been a sunrise for me.  It must take a certain momentum, a sustained intensity of sky-gazing to push the interior world through those last few degrees of rotation and bring the sun up over the horizon. It is a power I have not mustered.

I have to admit to you that I have had misgivings lately about the direction of the whole enterprise. I am exhausted. It wearies me to think of the number of times I’ve come to this spot, this interface of two worlds, and waited, soaked by squalls in one and stranded in a perpetual morning twilight in the other. For days, I’ve stood rooted here, imploring unseen deities to pull me through. It has only rained harder. I have had to lean into the wind to keep my feet. Hailstones have tattooed my back, leaving bruises the size of silver dollars. And sleep has been all I’ve craved, even at the mercy of the rain and hail.

I’ve had a hard time understanding why these things are happening. Only now does it begin to sink in. The sky has been trying to speak to me, but I haven’t been listening. It’s taken some forceful measures to get my attention. And even after catching bits of coherent language, I’ve been slow to come to my senses. But now the voice registers.  Now I can see there’s been a message all along in the weather’s resistance. For all of the times I’ve stalled at daybreak, I’ve never learned to start gathering force from the youngest hours. I am being told to go back and begin from the inner midnight.

It’s been a long time, too long, since that hour first passed for me.

I’d almost forgotten how it feels to be a young soul in a new night. I’d almost forgotten about exuberance and joy and possibilities. But now it comes back to me.

I expect that you will move on to the far side of sunrise while I sleep. I can imagine the best of all worlds over there. No fog. No dust storms. Nothing to obstruct your vision. And the light must be better, too, something even and strong to see by, from a sun that never sets. It would be easy to forget all of these dim hours over there, but try to hold a moment for your past. When the moon creeps in front of the sun and drapes a half-light over the land, remember these days when our vision was eclipsed and we struggled to see. Remember our time together.

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