Atmosphere

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

To look up at the nighttime sky is to become a part of a long line of people throughout human history who looked above at that same set of stars. It is to witness time unfolding.

“Don’t thank me for doing the bare minimum,” he said. “It does a disservice to us both.”

Everything else in Joan’s life was thinking thinking thinking thinking. But when she picked up that pencil to draw or put her hands on the cool keys, the thinking stopped.

“Well, we are the stars,” Joan said. “And the stars are us. Every atom in our bodies was once out there. Was once a part of them. To look at the night sky is to look at parts of who you once were, who you may one day be.”

Could you burn up from a gaze this bright upon you?

“Because there are so many ways to define God and there’s still so much unknown about the universe. I could never say that science has obliterated the possibility of God.

“I am going to say, ‘That’s God’! Not just because it’s beautiful, but because sunrise over the mountains is part of the universe itself. Everything, all of us, is God.”

What are we doing? Joan thought. Believing we have any right to be up here?

Space belonged to no one, but Earth belonged to all of them.