(Inspired by a poem of the same name by Richard Brautigan)

I was trying to describe you to someone and I got to talking about last summer when my brother and his wife and I drove out to West Texas. We did this thing at the McDonald observatory, where the astronomers there for summer research have set these huge telescopes to look out at whichever celestial body is most visible that night. 


We probably looked through a dozen telescopes, and I’ve since forgotten all of the star formations we saw, save for the Cat’s Eye Nebula. 

It was blue. Maybe like the faded teal walls at Tigress that you couldn’t get over, 

or maybe like the ocean on old globes where Rhodesia is still a country. 

To me, it was blue like Obi-Wan Kenobi’s lightsaber.

When I saw it, I got goosebumps and for a moment, I thought I’d lose my balance. 

“It’s real pretty, right?” the astronomer running that telescope asked me. 

And I said, 

“yeah.” 

But pretty falls short: 
when I saw it, I felt moved, and small, and like there must be a god because who else would make anything so amazing in a place that might never be seen except for a real artist? 

I felt like everyone in the world should see the Cat’s Eye Nebula, and maybe, if only for a moment, we’d realize how all the bullshit we fight about is so trivial—in the grand scheme of things, at least. 

Anyway, that’s what you’re like to me.