The Star Fisher

by Christopher F. Mills

  When he made it back home he found she had left him a ticket to follow her on Friday and a letter promising him it would be worth it. At the end of the letter she wrote a P.S.:

  “Conditioner. I always use too much conditioner.”

  He smiled, remembering their talk about the ketchup and syrup.

  On Friday she was sitting in the swing when a cab pulled in the drive. He got out of the cab, paid the driver, and walked over and sat with her, and it was as if there had been no few days between them. He took her hand and they sat in silence for a while and then they talked for three hours that seemed like three minutes. At twilight she stood and walked toward the stalls and swung her arm for him to follow. She said,

  “There's something I wish to show you. It will make you amazed and astonished. We must saddle up Stardust and Twelve Bolides. We will gallop them to the Back Eighty-three.”

  She then told him what to write when he wrote this part of their famous story,

  “In the Field of Wonders can be found some, but not all, of the Cosmic Miracles. I went to the Field of Wonders and was made astonished and a question was answered by the end.”

  As she saddled Twelve Bolides, he asked,

  “How'd you come up with the name Twelve Bolides?”

  “Bolide is a term for a meteorite that made it all the way to the earth. One day, not long after I bought her and had not named her yet, me and Twelve Bolides were in the Back Eighty-three when we happened upon some rocks. I noticed they were different looking, they were multi-colored and full of holes. I picked them up—there were twelve of them, some no bigger than pebbles, the largest being no bigger than my thumb—and asked a geologist friend of mine what kind of rock they were. He told me they were bolides, fallen space rock that did not burn up in the atmosphere. So I thought that was the perfect name.”

  She threw Twelve Bolide's saddle over her and cinched the bottom strap. He worked on saddling Stardust. She said,

  “You will ride Stardust. He is an old aristocratic, blue-blooded horse and long ago learned his genteel manners at horse college. He scored the top of his class in calm and collection, so you can be sure he will be most polite with you. My Twelve Bolides didn't do so well at school; she is not so civilized and is a bit rough around the edges and can be, as you can see, kittenish. She gets this way when she considers I have spent too much of my time of hers with another. She is a jealous equine and I love her all the more for it. That green-eyed monster inside her proves her love for me is unquestionable and bona fide. Stardust could care less. He can be counted on for a fine display of civilization, as long as he gets his oats. But he is a great big hound and I love him anyway.”

  When they were finished with the saddles he put his hands out and she stepped in them and he lifted her onto Twelve Bolides. After she was sitting high in the saddle, he stepped onto Stardust and they galloped off. It was a furlong to the field and took about a minute. There were two sycamores, three ash trees and one giant cottonwood they had to travel under to get there and when they turned into the field what he saw struck him dumb with wonder. The field was lit. Across the tract as far as his eyes could see there were delicate diamonds of light, some twinkling, some still, a great web of diamond orbs, glowing in the grass. He stopped and stared. It was a love feast for his eyes. She allowed him time to take it in, then asked,

  “Well. . . . How do you like it?”

  “It's the Field of Wonder. . . .” Is all he could think to say.

  She clucked at Twelve Bolides and the horse cantered into the field. He and Stardust loped after them and as their hooves touched the lights the horses neighed their bliss. The two horses were enjoying the light show as much as they were. He asked,

  “How is this? How have I never seen this anywhere before?”

  “If I told you how this is, it would simplify it. Do you really wish to simplify this, or would you rather it remain a mystery?”

  “Mystery. Why are people not down here, watching this?”

  “People get used to wonder and then it becomes not wonder. They have seen this so many times they cannot see it anymore. It has become invisible to them. And many have walked right by and never seen. You could have driven by this and never seen it. Why do you see it now?”

  “Because you showed it to me.”

  “Because you were ready to see it. It's a natural phenomenon. It happens every day somewhere and here quite often, for some reason. I have been watching this particular field for some time. I saw it do this for the first time many years ago. And then a long period where it would not show the diamonds and lately, the diamonds have come back, stronger than ever.”

  They walked to the edge of the field where ran a stream. The field dropped off and below them gurgled the waters. Along the stream's edge there were giant pecan trees and the horses were cracking the giant pecans under their hooves. He said,

  “It is something you could easily miss, if you weren't paying attention. I can understand most people walking right by this. But if you are paying attention, if you are in a state of wonder, it's nothing you would miss.”

  The moon was coming up through the giant pecan grove. It looked bigger than he had ever seen it. She said,

  “This is the Field of Wonders which will give way to the Age of Wonders which will give way to. . . . Who knows what wonder and wonders all that will give way to? That is the wonder of wonder, what it will make, what it can do, to what before was just average, day-to-day and tedious. You will start a revolution of wonder. A quiet revolution in hearts and minds all over. We need to bring the entire world to this field.”

  He said, “I don't know about all that. But I will be proud to help a few here and there kickoff their own age of wonder. I have thought about this wonder stuff. What it is. I think I have figured some of it out.

  “If we come to love, but our love is not returned—what is the answer and meaning in all that? If we attempt to build a work of art from our love, and that work fail and so, too, our effort be for naught, what is the answer to that? I wonder if all that is not the beginning of the age of wonder in our souls? When we have discovered in ourselves love for some other soul—even if they do not discover the same for us; when we have failed at some great undertaking and all our love and attempts at success in life be unrequited for whatever reason, then is when the next chance for love and success is to be made from the dust of the old chance and love. We must make from that love and that work that has hit a dead-end something good or bad, light or dark, wonder or despair. That is the choice.

  “We all have this love and desire to create in us, which will lead us to wonder. And we all have many who will fail to return our love and we all will fail many times to create and by all that, we are given the chance to know the grace of wonder and by that graceful thing, to rebuild our hopes and love for chance at love and creation. Wonder makes us and wonder saves us. I know well these things because I have failed at many things. I have had much failure to know what I am talking about considering this matter of wonder being born best from failure. I am the world's greatest authority on failure and the wonder and new chance that may come of it. The only thing I have ever succeeded at is getting back up when knocked down. Starting again after failing again. Never giving up.”

  She replied, “So that is the great power of unrequited love, in it is the frustrated energy and means to change and question and that will lead us to the newest age within us, the age of our own wonder, and when we go into that age, then to places like the Field of Wonder we may go, and maybe that is a place of eternal love and success of life and being.”

  “Is anything eternal? I don't know. I wonder. See? Questions make one wonder. And failure makes us question. All have known great unrequited love and life. All of us have known failure. And each time we despair. And then we seek back our wonder. And many times we wonder if wonder has stopped existing for us. Many times it seemed wonder would no longer stand by us. We look for wonder and cannot find her. Sometimes we despise
wonder. Sometimes it seems wonder despises us. But we eventually find her again. Or maybe, it is wonder who finds us. It is hard to look for wonder when all is gone and there is nothing left. But we must do this, for wonder will make the perception of all things return. And it is all perception first before it is; before it becomes. We are mind-tricksters and magicians and don't even know it. Life is magic act. And without wonder, the magic disappears and we can only see what is before us—and not what is ahead of us—if we believe in the miracle. In a mindset devoid of wonder we miss the possibilities of and for our own greatness; our happiest and best dream. Without wonder, we do not really even dream. We miss the magic. We miss the vision of the future and the wonderful evolution of the past within the present; we miss the converging of time's epitomes that show the whole of our lives as sublime possibilities and realities.”

  He sat quiet a while then looked over and said,

  “Thank you for showing this to me.”

  “Thank you for seeing it.”

  They had walked halfway through the field and turned Stardust and Twelve Bolides around, facing the expanse of the open tract. Fifty acres of field stretched ahead of them; the lights were a multitude of winking wonder. He stood straight in the saddle and looked over with a serious aspect and said,

  “I've talked with Stardust and told him how important it is he win this race. He tells me he can beat Twelve Bolides with two hooves tied behind his back. What does Twelve Bolides think about it?”

  She slapped the flank of Twelve Bolides and they jumped off the line like a blazing comet. They had the lead, but Stardust would soon be charging past them like a flash of blue lightning. She knew her horses. Twelve Bolides was quickest at the quarter mile but she had no chance against Stardust in the longer distance. And they had fifty acres of open field ahead of them. Stardust would run past them long before that. She smiled as mighty hooves with mighty dreams in them raced through the diamond-lit, eighty-three-acre Field of Wonders.

  Partings

  December 1963

  He had to leave for the place he called home, a place that didn't seem so much a home any longer. He didn't want to fly away—it was too fast a way to leave—so he slowly and with a heavy heart, boarded a train. He boarded with one case, but left his heart behind with her. He looked at her standing on the depot steps. She had come to see him off. As the train chugged out of the station he looked back and watched her become smaller. She soon became as small as a dot, then an iota, and then disappeared completely—back into the figment of his imagination. She had asked him to write to her about whatever his pen wanted to write about. “A love letter would be nice. . . .” She asked him to write, whenever he was ready, The Last Book. She had penned him a final letter. He read it on the train.

  A Letter from her

  Dear Star Fisher,

  Three years. It's gone by like a dream. By you I figured out the single most important of the cosmic miracles: the dreamer. If you ever get stuck, sad or confused about anything, remember for a moment that your life—the life within you—is, in fact, the single most incredible cosmic miracle in the universe and that, were the miracle to be truly understood by the owner of it, all other miracles could be affected, and sure the unsticking of a life here on this earth. We are all writers of the short story that is life and all writer's get writer's block. We get stuck when we don't know what to do with our story. But if we stick with it; if we use our imagination and our belief that the way will come to us even more than we can figure out the way—that the universe will bring us the way—that block will soon become a transition. The writer must believe through the murkiness. So when we have life block, if we are calm, have faith, and believe, the block will be unblocked.

  It is ironic but true; we come here ready-made in the soul, it just takes time for the loaf to rise. Even the smallest, shortest, most—so-called—footling kind of life may proclaim, entitle, endow, exalt and inspire life. And even the most exalted kind of life may fail life entirely.

  The inspirational life is not a hard job by itself; it comes naturally to one who finds life a miracle that is wonderful and something like a magic trick, but the trick is to continue doing that, to continue believing in all that, surrounded by savage events. If all were sentimental about life, the job of proclaiming and inspiring life would not be so difficult. And that is the work of all of us who would be inspired by life: to remain so, though surrounded by death and destruction of the ideals of life.

  The lot of mankind are seekers of power. But there are some who seek life. Some seek to understand it. To become it. To live it. To be a giver of and not a taker of it. To inspire it. It is the work of wonder to understand and elucidate, clarify and clear up this spirit of life within. You have done this. Keep doing it.

  We destroy our chance at life, in all the little ways. Life is the hardest task master and the most difficult example to live up to. This entropy within us, it seeks to kill us. To take us out. This death is in all of us. It's why we do the things that do not bring life, but death. Death makes choices for us and we follow them to the letter. Death makes death easy. Life sits there and makes us go to it. Life is hard. Life is the epitome of the universe's achievement in complex machinery. The life of a blade of grass. The life of a man. The life of a mouse. And we destroy all these things and think nothing of it.

  Me and you believe the means to life is wonder. Wonder is man's helpmate with the chore of life. Wonder makes the task easier. There is either a god who did this or the universe has a sense of wonder within it. And life is the apex of all wonder. True wonder proves the being is in tune with the universe and so that being may then unfold to its best being. By our wonder we grow. Every day should be a day devoted to discovering more of it. What a grand waste has been the most of the cosmic events of the past fifteen billion years, without a sentimental mind to look upon it all and know, to wonder upon it in awe. This is what you have done. I have set some thought to the cosmic miracles. I am not wise enough to know them all, but I have figured at least ten of them out. Here are my ten of the Cosmic Miracles within:

  Life: an eternal question.

  Wonder: admiration for life.

  Appreciation: honor of life.

  Work: earning of life.

  Will: wonder turned to direct purpose.

  Purpose: the secret of a soul.

  Desire: force that seeks purpose.

  Faith: the purpose unknown yet.

  Joy: the success of purpose.

  Love: all the cosmic miracles in perfection.

  I think the Cosmic Miracles are like the colors, all set together and swirling. And you are, to me, all the colorful cosmic miracles in perfection.

  The Star Fisher's Love Letter

  May 12, 1964

  Imagine a book with five billion pages, small print. Each page representing a year since the sun was formed and began shining. It is impossible to do, of course, not even the world’s greatest imagination could do it. Five billion is just a useful number to add or subtract things with, there is no real way any man could imagine what five billion years is like. We little beings who live, at the longest, for 120 years, could not possibly know more than the first thing about what a million years is like, or even just 10,000 years, and a billion years is a thousand millions . . . .

  Our time here is but a drop compared to the vast expanse of time that has gone on and will go on. We comprehend eternity only as idea. No mind can see forever. I would say all things are perceivable, except eternity. We cannot know that long a time, even in our imaginations.

  We view the stars at night and see the light anywhere from three or four years ago to hundreds of years ago, and even that is just a little time. They are new stars as far as the universe is concerned. We are such small things, with such small time, such a thing as a minute we count as meaningful, an hour can seem forever, a day goes by like a year and three years can go by like a short, sweet dream.

  Imagine another book. It is 225 pages long, every pa
ge representing a million years. That is how long the dinosaurs ruled the earth. That was 65 million years ago— print another book, 65 pages long. A short book, but one with lots of writing. In the last two pages, the last two million years, man-like creatures have been evolving on this planet. The first men came upon the scene about 100,000 years ago. That is one-tenth of a page; a few sentences. 10,000 years ago man began civilization; a few words of a short sentence. 2000 years ago—three or four words—Jesus was born. A little more than 500 years ago—two words in this short book—Columbus discovered the last new country and Shakespeare was writing his plays. Some few decades ago I was born and you were born and all who live now were born, some few decades ago; maybe two decades or maybe ten. That is one short word, maybe an “an” or a “the” at the longest and the mere whisper of the beginning of a word, at the least. And it is still up in the air when all who live now will die, but those days will come and pass soon. Those days that seem yet so far away, and so impossible, still. All our future stretches before us and it can go in so many different ways. But this is sure: in this great and ongoing book of life, we have but time and opportunity for a single short word, and no more.

  When the first water fell from the sky and began making the rivers and the oceans, our time to live and love was still very far into the future. When the oceans had formed and the first wave began making the first grain of sand from the first rock, our time to live and love was still very far in the future. Eons passed away and then eons passed away again and then the first life formed in what they like to call the “Primordial Ooze” and then from there all hell began to break loose very, very slowly. Eons passed again and that first unicellular organism decided enough was enough and it added another cell, and voila! A multi-cellular organism was created. This helped things along and another billion years passed and life was then everywhere, at least in the seas. And our lives were still a long ways off, in a far away time; that time then was so fantastically unlike this present time as to be wholly unbelievable by those creatures who lived then; if they had been able to be shown it, they still would not have believed it.