Astro Things
by Chandra Steele
ASTROLOGY
Until people looked at the stars and came up with stories about them, there were just the physical things of the earth to contend with
Not getting eaten by animals that were bigger than us (which was all of them)
And wondering why water fell from the sky and how we could control it or even just prepare for it
When there weren't rain boots yet, let alone so many other weird things to call them like galoshes
There was just land and survival and the mundane
Then things got a little better and we had the space to breathe and look up
Above us things were bright and we could see ourselves in the stars that flickered in and out like our own newly forming hopes and imaginings
We projected ourselves onto their patterns and shifts
Without astrology we would have remained rooted only to what was below us
Absent astrology there wouldn't have been the fire to know about things we couldn't touch and progress to astronomy
ASTRONOMY
Science requires faith
That we even have to bring in a word with such heavy religious overtones should tell us that we shouldn't fully trust the situation
There is no overarching theory of everything
There are just a bunch of educated guesses about a few things that often contradict each other
And every once in a while someone comes in with a red pencil and Xs out entire decades of thought and says, “No that's not it this is it we are right this time. Definitely. Probably. Where is my prize.”
Astronomy tells us where we can expect to be and when in our trip around the sun and so it brings order to our small sense of life
But is it 2022 or is it 5782 or is it some other year that we lost track of and so we had to start counting again?
We live our lives around these arbitrary numbers and accept their discipline
But it's like setting up an entire civilization on a watch face and not realizing that there's anything outside of its flat plane and incessant ticking and minute hand that we cannot outrun
So it sweeps us away, indifferent to our existence
The universe and its fellow universes and whatever else might surround them encompass the definition of a cosmic joke
But in space no one can hear you laugh
Earth is teeming with millions of species of creatures and plants of staggering variety
And the planets, as far as we can see, which is thousands of years because distance is really time, can't manage even some plankton
Go into a store like a Home Goods and look around, contemplate the vastness of salt and pepper shaker types available
On the next planet over and the next one after that and after that and after that there is one shade of rock
I am skeptical of the whole thing
Astrology
Astronomy
Even my own actuality
Chandra Steele is a writer and journalist from New York. Her work has appeared in Capsule Stories, superfroot, No Contact, Wigleaf, Storm Cellar, Ample Remains, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and other places. Rick Moody once said she wrote the best description of a racetrack he has ever read. She has never been to a racetrack.
