“Excuse me while I kiss the stars.” -Jimi Hendrix, with help from Me
Reader, it has long since been a habit of mine to lift my lips to the dark sky and blow a kiss to the faraway stars each time they peer down upon me. As a child I thought I was immensely clever for such an idea, so you can imagine my horror when I realised the idea had already been made iconic by one of the greatest musicians in recorded history. Youth may be a blessing, but how unfortunate to live a life in which every original idea is a resurrection of another man’s creativity.
At any rate, I have no intention of abandoning the practice anytime soon. I love kissing the stars. I love how it makes me feel, how romantic I perceive myself to be whilst sharing a totally public moment of intimacy with visions from the past belonging to no one in particular.
Darling Reader, to kiss the stars is to celebrate life. I beg of you, the next time you find yourself under the vast expanse of darkness sprinkled with the silhouettes of mermaids, bears, and heroes of old, to offer up the most simple of gifts in your arsenal – a kiss. Though some believe they shine particularly brightly upon a chosen few, it is my position that the stars are indiscriminate and delighted by recognition when it comes from those who do not seek to uncover their secrets with mirrored lenses and yellow pads of paper. Thus, when graced with a peck of affection from an individual as charming as yourself, Reader, the stars rain down with eons of light a blessing of total elation – nothing can rival the feeling of freedom, the way one feels uniquely special in the moments after such a delicate, nonsensical act as blowing a kiss to the ancient and intangible.
We are privileged to live beneath a soaring cosmos conceived by a limitless imagination, and yet we are cursed to remain on this singular planet, bound to explore only what is made possible in our dreams. What a mockery is made of our kind each time our precious sun falls to the other side of the Earth, and the brilliant purple lights giggle at us from their posts in the sky. What a humiliation it is to see but never truly see, to wish and in doing so to surrender one’s command of her own dreams, to hope to understand but a fraction of what lies beyond the atmosphere that chokes us even as it gives us life.
Perhaps I am a simple fool, Reader, but when being made into a charade, a travesty of my own being, I have found there is no better riposte than a kiss. A kiss is a form of delightful scorn in its own right, usually a concession that one’s foremost vehicle of life no longer is their own, but also a delicious acknowledgement of a champion with whom we will never be able to compete. No being of flesh and blood is a worthy adversary of the stars, not even those immortalised above us were victorious in their conquests of the heavens. And thus, I make light of their ridicule, I relish in their ultimate sovereignty, I flirt with what will never belong to me. To kiss the stars is to do nothing more than drown oneself in a champagne flute and call it flying.
Darling Reader, the stars may be devious little beasts, but I will be the first to admit they have not yet abandoned us, and surely they have had many opportunities to do so. Can you imagine a world in which you look up and see nothing but a dome of black overhead, extending past your lifetime and that of every other creature on earth? No, it would be an isolated existence too terrible to endure. The stars know their duties are great, and they uphold them day and night without fail. For that, for my eternal gratitude, I kiss them.
Still, my most lovely Reader, how I love the stars. Etoiles, estrellas, stelle… even their names are beautiful. I have nothing to offer the stars which they do not already possess – they have my heart, they know my every thought, they see my every move. But it is not until I so decide are they granted my kiss. We kiss the things we adore, and thus, I kiss the stars.
Perhaps we each hold dear a moment of whimsy in our lives, a practice that acts as our tether to the great romance of living. I believe this to be the primary function of my little habit, and this knowledge does nothing to disillusion me of its value. To kiss the stars is to live, dear Reader, and I hope for you peppered skies and starry evenings as long as you may live.
Love,
Lettie Anne