in the folds of orions tunic

i'm feeling pensive, so here goes. as i was walking home from my evening, all-too-early at 12:30, i looked up at the sky as i often do on the home stretch (the part of my walk that is so close to my funny pink apartment building that i always walk it alone) to contemplate the stars. within my first few months here, while i was still feeling very much unsettled and discombobulated, i spotted orion. this is also a good time to admit that my interest in astronomy and the science of space has been growing at a faster-than-steady rate, perhaps culminating in my attempt at saying "we all come from the stars" in japanese to my friend's mother as we all watched the moon rise over the silhouette of the mountains after the all-day oyster party i attended (perhaps a post will follow exploring that further). she either understood and liked the idea, or thought i had a few too many oysters and far too many drinks that day.

so i know orion. who doesn't? "orion has got to be the most easily recognized constellation up there", you say? you're right. there's nothing profound about it or my relation to it. at all. i just don't know many constellations but do know orion (today i found the big dipper, haHA). i felt comforted that first night in some cheesy way, awash in a sea of the unfamiliar, but grounded by stars i recognized. here i was on the other side of the big wide world, and orion had come with me. it was proof i was still in the same place, just a different neighborhood. so every now and again when i happen to have gotten it together to go out or stay out after dark, i spend the last block and a half of my homeward journey with my neck craned back, partly because i want to look that badly but can't be bothered to stop walking, and partly because the road is wide and empty. but tonight i had a thought. my first thought was "shit, i can't even find orion tonight." but after that (and after i found that Dipper, i THINK it was the Big one) i had a marginally more noteworthy thought. it's a bit of poetic irony that the thing i find most comforting as i explore a different corner of the world is something that only exists from our relative point in the universe. constellations are ethereal, so concrete an idea to so many, yet the stars that we imagine collaborating to form them actually have nothing to do with each other, other than all running off of fusion power, which makes us all terribly jealous.

i talk about it as if it's a different world here, but it's not. i have settled back in to many of my old habits, including being too lazy to go sightseeing. there are a plethora of differences on the surface, with how society operates and how people see fit to act in public or semi-private. the language is different, the body language is different, the cultural values (and taboos!) are different, sometimes to my embarrassment. the historical background is different here, which has led down a different path than the one i saw taken as i grew up. but it's not such a different world. people are still people at the core, and it's not even that much of a leap to understand why they act in the ways i don't recognize, when the impetus is considered. i don't feel like i live in some exotic locale any more, it's just life, with the caveat that i need a second language to operate a fair amount of it, and that i often don't understand how to act. maybe that last one isn't so different, i just cared less when i was a citizen. i don't feel the same sense of entitlement to do whatever i want here. yet among all of the familiar and camaraderie , all of the similarities, i took to the star patterns for support. in a life of ephemera, i found solace in an optical illusion.