centered in the universe

don't avoid urself

I hadn’t been to the Griffith Observatory since 2019. It’s one of my favorite places to go because despite the fact that I suffer from motion sickness and claustrophobia, I love learning about outer space.  I fondly remember childhood trips to the Kennedy Space Center, taking pictures with the giant rockets in the background, with men dressed up in astronaut gear posing outside of the visitor complex.  My favorite ride as a kid was always Space Mountain in Disney World. There’s something about driving up to the peak of Griffith Park, all of Los Angeles below, being able to travel to the farthest reaches of the universe while I sit in a reclining chair in an air conditioned dome and stare up into the blue.

The Samuel Oschin Planetarium opened again a few months ago, and when thinking about what I wanted to do on my last weekend in Los Angeles, I knew I wanted to go see Centered in the Universe.  I’ve seen the show a handful of times, but it never gets old. It’s always such a stunning experience that leaves me inquisitive and hopeful and present. I’ve been feeling extremely stuck lately.  I’ve been wondering about my “purpose” and what I'm supposed to be doing, feeling lost on the path, or wishing that the path were more clear.  When I found out that my husband and I would be relocating, I hoped that this might be the thing to get me unstuck, that I should go through the open door.

I don’t want to write about the man who chased me in the parking garage last Sunday.  I don’t want to write that when I was going to our rental car to meet my sister-in-law for lunch, a man was sitting in the stairwell of our building, that he was hunched over and talking to himself, eating a Reese’s egg, the yellow wrapper crumbled up beside him.  I thought he might be someone who worked in the building, that maybe he was on a break and wanted to sit here in peace.  I let him be.  When I walked out to the parking garage I heard the door open and close again behind me. I turned to see that the man had gotten up and was following me.  The rental was on the other side of the garage, and I had only made it halfway to the car. 

Miss! He yelled.  Come back here!

My hands went numb.  Sometimes when I lay in bed and write (something my Chiropractor has told me many times not to do) my fingers will start to tingle and lose feeling. This felt like that.  My grip on my car keys slipping.  I wasn’t sure I could successfully unlock the car door, get inside, and lock it again before the man reached me.  I wasn’t sure if he’d try to get in the car with me.  If he would pound on the windows.  If he would grab me before I got in. 

I don’t want to write about this man, but he’s all I’ve been able to think about the last few days.  He has haunted my dreams, he permeates every thought, and of course, every time I go downstairs I have to pass the area where I first saw him.  I’ve felt sorry for myself that this is one of the first experiences I had in this new place.  I had wanted a door to open, but not for someone to be following me through it.

My thought in the moment was that I needed to get outside and call for help.  I couldn’t speak, but I knew that I needed to run.  The man was getting closer, had picked up his pace, but I put a semicircle of distance between us and was able to ascend the slope of the garage to find the exit door.  I slammed it shut behind me (like I’ve seen in the movies where the protagonist attempts to put an obstacle between themselves and the character who’s chasing them) and kept running out onto the sidewalk.  A few seconds later I heard that same door open and saw that he was still running after me. 

Miss! He screamed.  I need to tell you something!

I didn’t know this man.  He did not need to tell me anything.  He was trying to get me to stop, to get me close to him so he could…so he could what?

Across the street from our building is a liquor store and a Domino’s.  I ran toward the shopping plaza and got my phone out of my pocket.  I dialed my husband and cried into the phone.  I told him what was happening and he said he’d be right down.  The man had stopped running and was staring at me from the other side of the street. 

I had wanted to say, “Stop following me!” “Please leave me alone!”  But I’ve heard that it’s best not to engage, to keep quiet.  But nevertheless, he had pursued me.  And as fast as he’d began chasing me, he ran away again and was gone. 

*

Centered in the Universe begins with a live lecturer holding an orb out to the audience.  The orb becomes illuminated as the lecturer reminds the audience that people have always “filled the sky with stories to explain the cycles of day and night, the circling of stars in the heavens, and the wandering of planets to help them feel at home in the universe.”  Our attention shifts to the dome as the narration guides us through the scientific theories that these stories inspired: Claudius Ptolemy’s Earth-centered universe, Galileo’s Sun-centered solar system, Edwin Hubble’s notion that the universe is not only incredibly vast but is also continuing to expand.

The show brings us to present day where astronomers are furthering their research into black holes, dark matter, dark energy.  I look around the auditorium and wonder if anyone else finds it eerie that we still don’t know the fate of life on Earth, of life elsewhere and beyond.  We still don’t know what dark matter is made of, only that it slows down the expansion of the universe by holding things together.  And we only know that something called dark energy has been pushing galaxies further apart at a faster rate as of about 7.5 billion years ago, faster than after the Big Bang.

But the lecturer returns at the end of the show.  She spins these unnerving facts into an encouragement, that perhaps somewhere in this very room there might be great minds, the great minds we need to propel us into the future.  The orb is once again filled with light and we are reminded that we are all made of stars, that explosion that spurred all life also created the galaxies, that we contain these galaxies within us and that we are all alike in this way.  Not only are we the same species; we are the same matter.

*

On my flight out of Los Angeles, our plane flew directly into a storm.  The fasten-seatbelt icon glowed in the dark body of the plane.  Outside our windows lightening flashed and rain cascaded in horizontal patterns.  It was the worst turbulence I’ve ever been in, but all the passengers were silent, poised. 

I was in the aisle seat and the man next to me had worked on his laptop the entire four-hour flight.  The girl at the window had been reading a copy of Julie & Julia.  When I had initially sat down, I’d asked her if she’d been watching the new HBO show, Julia.  She was and we quickly bonded over our love for Julia Child.  I looked over at her in the midst of the turbulence and she was mirroring my fear, her hands grasping the armrests just like I was doing.  Her legs were shaking and her eyes were closed.

“Are you alright?” I asked, leaning over the man in the middle.

“Not really,” she cracked a laugh and I told her that I too was not okay.

“Do you want to hold hands?” I asked and she replied, “Please,” and we held hands over the man’s legs.  The plane dropped and bumped and shook but something drew me to the girl in the window seat, something inside me told me she was like me, she was a friend.  After the flight we exchanged information even met up a few days later for lunch. 

It was easy for me to see that we are made of the same material.  We talked for two hours and I could feel the matter pulling us together, creating a strong bond between us that would last even after she left the city and I stayed behind. 

Me and the man who chased me are also made up of the same matter.  As I put that semicircle of distance between us, we became two planets orbiting each other. It would be easy to say he was all dark energy, the way his body sped up when he saw me.  But maybe the reason I’ve been so stuck is because I’ve been avoiding my own dark energy, that I am getting older, my life accelerating in many ways, how the galaxies of my life are dispersing, shifting, making room for something new or creating an openness where perhaps before I’ve been closed. Me and the man are both made of the same stardust, and so are me and the girl on the plane, and so are me and my husband. 

Knowing this doesn’t make any of the uncertainty any easier. But it’s a fact, a cosmological law that holds up in the realm of the stars.

*

When I leave the Planetarium, I drive through Los Feliz for a burger and a strawberry milkshake.  I go home and pack for the trip, the length of which is undetermined, a one-way ticket in my email inbox.  I video call my husband and we speak to each other through the phone.  I await the moment we will be together again.

I shared a quote by Melissa Febos from Body Work in my personal essay workshop this week:

“I don’t mean to argue that writing personally is for everyone.  What I'm saying is: don’t avoid yourself.  The story that comes calling might be your own and it might not go away if you don’t open the door.  I don’t believe in writer’s block.  I only believe in fear.  And you can be afraid and still write something.”

I often imagine myself at the center of things.  It’s part of the job description as a writer, to make oneself the protagonist, the focus, the heart of our work.  We used to think the solar system revolved around the earth.  I used to think I’d find something that would make me whole.  But my seeking is what keeps me centered, not the other way around.

—

An excerpt of “Lunch Date” is now up with No Contact as part of their Contactless Readings.

Burningword Literary Journal published a flash piece of mine, “Hear and Do.”

My 6-Week Open-Genre Generative Seminar: The Art of Imitation with Catapult starts next Wednesday, April 27th!

I am also guiding a Crafting Form workshop with Write or Die Tribe next Saturday, April 30th!! And I’ve got a Beg, Borrow, Write! workshop coming up on Saturday, May 21st as well.

Please pass this info along to friends who are looking for a supportive (and fun!) writing community.