Emmie's Entries

A Terrace to Heaven

I've always loved the stars and cosmos. I feel a connection to them. Stargazing and watching meteor showers are almost like going to church for me. The outdoors are my temple, and as I stand there looking up, I am having a moment between myself and the Heavens. The Perseids meteor shower is considered to be one of the best meteor showers of the year, second only to the Geminids meteor shower. Once I remembered it was only 11/12 days away, I began thinking back to the most humbling moments between myself and the cosmos thus far. The first one that came to mind was the moment I first saw the Milky Way. It was during spring break of last year.

It was around 11PM and my dad and I were driving to Texas to visit my grandparents. We had left that day, and we were going to stop for the night in El Paso, Texas. We pulled over at the last turn-out on the freeway before the exit to Las Cruces, New Mexico. I got out of the car, and I didn't even need to look up to start seeing the stars. My dad had seen the galaxy several times before. The first time he saw it was in Oregon when he was just a little younger than me. He pointed it out to me, and right away my curious young mind was blown by what I saw.

I felt like a kitten with a star as my laser. However this was certainly not a game. No. This was spectacular. It was one of the sights I'd put on my bucket list to see. I felt as if I could reach out and touch the universe. It no longer looked like the sky anymore. It looked like I was driving through a neighborhood surrounded by raven black and midnight blue Mount Everests. Which with the stars decorating them, looked like pieces of black, bedazzled satin ribbon surrounding a nearly empty grey and white paper freeway. I looked up and I no longer saw the night sky. The only thing between the freeway and the Everests was the barely visible and shadowy horizon created by the hills and fields that severed the ribbon from the paper. It was kind of like the stacks of houses on the hills in the slums of Tibet or Brazil. There were some parts of the Everests that were more lit up than others, but they all looked like towering peaks built out of lantern-lit neighborhoods and city streets. Each layer of the mountain, each terrace, and each level its own ethereal avenue.

It's as if, when I got out, then if I had the energy I might've been able to run through the fields and perhaps to the illuminated house closest to its Everest's ground level. I looked up there and I was immediately humbled by what I saw. I was truly just a speck of dust with a heartbeat floating through an endless wormhole of time and space.

I felt it all. I felt it in my soul. One of my greatest convictions came to light, and my question was finally given an understandable and genuine answer. I knew it. I realized it.

I felt it now.

There is someone, some being, some force of energy and nature, that is up there watching over us. All powerful, no. All knowing, perhaps. Someone up there who creates and helps us stay on the path of our fate. I've always known of and believed in a spirit world. Does this mean that I'm of any specific denomination? No. Just as before, I am still a spiritual agnostic. I was touching the sky and within that touch, I touched Heaven. Every being, field, and energy. I touched life herself. I touched angels, demons, the universe herself and as a whole. I was touching my own ghosts, heartbeats and breaths from this life, the ones before, and the ones to come; I was touching time, and music too. I touched my soul.

I had become one with the cosmos.

By the time I got back in the car, I felt as though I had run through the desert field and climbed the Everests. The fingers of God herself had, for a few moments, intertwined with my own. My fingertips were coated in stardust, and despite my sweatshirt I could still feel the back of my neck littered with goosebumps.

Life would never be the same.