i don't want to make that hollywood stars analogy

i love looking up

it's summer. this is the time of the year when i find myself lazing on the grass, watching plato's shadows dancing on the inside of my eyelids, or looking up at the stars, marvelling at that glorious, glorious universe stretching out before me. even though i haven't been to burning man since '97, i can still remember that first night i was out there, staring at the stars, realizing that, dear god, i was looking at the milky way. it's really out there.

since i grew up in los angeles, any childhood memories i have of looking up at the nightime sky pretty much ends up with descriptions of arby's ads, searchlights for movie premieres, or how frequently the white light would flash in respect to the red light on an airplane landing or departing lax airport. the internationally known l.a. smog can make for some fantastic sunsets, but as far as a night sky, it ranks low in the guidebooks. nobody's going to recommend it.

my college years, on the other hand, were different. i lived in santa cruz, where the trees and ocean met, shook hands and talked about the wife and kids. this is where nature existed outside of a movie set.

one night, as i was a starving student driving home from campus, i looked up at the sky. i was feeling drugged out from working on my thesis for three days straight. i had been up for 72 hours in this claustrophobically tiny room looking at 16mm film.

film. film. film. i was eating, breathing, living film. these chemically emulsified plastic strips had found themselves in every pore of my body. i had been convinced that, through osmosis, kodak was now more in my dna than my dad. genetics. dna. i don't know. go away, i'm working on my thesis.

anyway, i hadn't seen the light of day for at least 72 hours. it was just me in that room with the flatbed, the film and the tiny, tiny lightbulb.

after three days of this, i finally found myself going home. i was driving down the hills of the beautiful santa cruz campus when i looked up and i saw, up in the night sky, a big white scratch in the negative that flashed before me for just a split second. what a pisser.

when i got to the stop sign at the base of the hill, it occurred to me that i was no longer in the editing booth. that wasn't a scratch in the neg at all.

it was a shooting star.

<08.24.03>

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