pillars of creation

The Pillars of Creation don’t exist. This astonishing, beautiful birthplace of stars is no more.

We know this, of course. It takes light a hell of a long time to reach us from some 7,000 light years away. The pillars as we see them now haven’t existed for probably a thousand years. It is thought that they were likely destroyed by a supernova shockwave, though some argue for a more gradual erosion. Regardless, they are gone.

It is greatly humbling, this realization.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We understand that this is the cycle, no matter what mythology we drape around it. You are now, soon you won’t be, at least in any kind of form you understand. On a cosmic timescale, even the longest life barely happens. This humbles me, but it also fills me with awe. That we even exist fills me with awe. That there might be infinite universes, or none.

I do not spend a great deal of conscious time dwelling on this. Being neither religious nor a practitioner of any type of meditation, my time examining such matters is…haphazard, I suppose you’d say. Yet a cosmic perspective informs everything I do, especially creatively.

I recently finished a story I’m proud of. This is unusual, in that I’m very aware of my limitations as a writer and I mostly see my stories for what they aren’t. For how they didn’t quite get across what I was really trying to say. This new one gets pretty close, though, and that makes me excited. Alive. It really is the greatest feeling. And it is a gift.

I don’t pray, but I do talk to the universe every night before sleep overtakes me. And one of the things I always say is: “I am a storyteller. Nothing more, nothing less and humble in front of the gift of the Muse.” It’s kind of an awkward way of reminding myself every day, regardless of what happened, what the core of my being is, as well as a way of saying thanks. You don’t need deities to say thank you to. You can just thank the stars.

The Pillars of Creation are gone, but they are not. They are inside us, if we dare to look. It is beautiful there, and violent. Creation is a wild act and cannot be tamed. It is dangerous. Birth is dangerous. Stars don’t easily come into being, but when they do, they are beautiful to witness. And for each star that dies, another is born. There is not one Pillar of Creation, but many.

And that fills me with awe and humility.