The Star Fisher

by Christopher F. Mills

  The Star Fisher

  January 7, 2012

  The final earthly dream

  of the Star Fisher

  On the last night of his life the Star fisher slept and had a final dream. In the dream a young woman, of good height and long hair and Indian summer eyes, told him to dig. She was his guardian angel and he did as she said. And he found a ring.

  It was the ring that had been buried decades before. It brought back memories of when he was young. Memories he had once set aside for many years, then took back up again. There was the memory of the time when he had reached out and tamed a bird who then hopped into his hand. There was the memory of the day he had dreamt of a beautiful angel of the future. There was the memory of the day his best friend had fallen from the tree. She had hit her head on the white brick and died there. In the ring were inscribed ancient words.

  He remembered the bird hopping into his hand and the girl smiling in astonishment, then the slip and the fall and her hair splayed out on the white brick that became red. It had been a trillion miles and a lifetime since he last saw her, but in him she had always remained a living dream. Her Indian eyes had never failed to mesmerize him and make him speechless.

  They had buried the ring years before her fall, as a time capsule, and had promised to one day return and dig it up. He heard the voice of the angel,

  “Dreamer, when you two buried the ring, you both made a pact that if either of you died, the other would go on to finish the discovery of wonder, and with that discovery, you would then call into being the age of wonder. Wonder is the ancient and buried memory of original starlight. You uncovered and remembered. You unfettered your soul of worldly things and uncovered the original starlight there. You called into being the age of wonder. You made your promise to her true. Now you may wake from this worldly life and go to meet her again, as if for the first time. She has been waiting for you.”

  It was long ago when the Star Fisher was young and formed the dream of his life with one who then flew away. There were thousands of stars glittering in the firmament that night. It was like a field of diamonds and they were made to wonder by it. Then his entire life passed in the blink of an eye, and then he woke from his last dream and looked about in the last hours of his worldly dream, and listened to the clarion call of the big horn. It was the darkest hour before sunrise on the last day. He remembered the dream of a great treasure on a mountaintop. He remembered the beautiful angel, made of God, man, and light, who had come to him in his first dream and had walked beside him during his life. She had, when he was young, given him instructions on how to go to this mountaintop, but it would be a trillion mile trip and he had but one lifetime to make it if he wished to gain this treasured dream.

  He remembered asking the beautiful angel,

  “You tell me this treasure is a trillion miles away, I have no way by which to travel that distance. I have but my feet to travel by.”

  And the angel had said,

  “You have one planet by which to make that distance. Do you believe in your dream of treasure?”

  The Star Fisher answered that he did and the angel replied:

  “Is your dream big enough to make a trillion miles seem a short distance? A trillion miles is little distance between a man and his dream. For his dream, the dreamer will find the way.”

  “But there is so little time left for me to make it to this mountain top. A single life-time to make a trillion miles? What if I cannot make it in that time?”

  “There is time enough for you to make it to the mountain top, but not time enough for everything else. You must decide if it is the dream you wish, or the other things. There is plenty of time for one great thing, but not for all the other things.”

  The Star Fisher asked, “What is life that makes these dreams?”

  The angel answered,

  “Life is what happens when original starlight travels a very long ways for a very long time. It eventually coalesces into the atomic matter of life. And what happens after that is anybody's guess, what life becomes. But this be sure: life is the dream of a star, come true. Life is what happens when light has traveled a trillion miles toward a dream.”

  He asked, “What is this wonder, that makes life wonderful?”

  “Wonder is the mirror of life, where one can look into life and see all possibility within it. It is that simple a thing. It is just a mirror that shows possibility.”

  And so the Star Fisher had begun walking and the years passed. He knew many hardships. When he went blind, the angel told him, “You see best by wonder and walk best by faith. Continue on your path.”

  When he lost the last of his worldly possessions, the angel told him, “Worldly fortune is a burden to true wonder. Continue on your path.”

  When he lost the last of his friends and family, the angel told him, “Loneliness is a beacon light to wonder. Continue on your path.”

  When he lost his health and strength the angel said, “Wonder is not of the body or the mind, but of the spirit. Continue on your path.”

  When he came to the end of love's hope and hoped no more for love, the angel said, “Love is not required from any other for you to know love complete. Continue on your path, dreamer.”

  When he came to the very end of failure and even his name became worthless, and he complained of it, the angel replied, “What is any worldly thing, such as a good name, worth to a wonderer? What is failure or success? Nothing of or in this world, by itself, will help you discover, know and build your wonder. Your wonder is within. Cease troubling me with these minor details and continue on the path.”

  So after a long and solitary lifetime and a trillion miles through the universe, the Star Fisher came to his last hour and stopped his long struggles and looked back. He asked of the angel what was his treasure. What had he gained by his seeking. The angel replied,

  “Yourself. You gained yourself, after losing yourself. Love is giving of yourself to some other, or some ideal. And they may keep you as treasure or discard you as trash. That is up to them, for love is nothing we own but is gift given and received. How empty we feel when some other throws us away after having been given the gift of our love; how dear we feel, when some other loves us back and thinks we are the most dear thing in the world and that owning our love makes them feel dear, too. How misplaced we feel when we have lost some other who was our treasure. How inconsequential we feel when he have lost everything that is of the world, even our good name. How hollow we feel when all our efforts seem to have been in vain. But by all this loss, we are made to know what is truly meaningful and valuable. To make it through this fluctuation of our perception of value is confusing, debilitating and demoralizing. But if we make it through, then we will come to understand our true worth and by that, all worth shall be added back greater than before; for now it will be known without all that, but by its own merit. You have done this, over a trillion miles and a lonely lifetime and through all the struggles you yourself agreed on in the beginning. All was taken from you except your capacity to wonder. And you never failed wonder. And wonder never failed you.”

  So the Star Fisher had a dream, to travel a trillion miles over a lifetime to find a great treasure and to call for an age of wonder. And he learned the treasure was the journey and the wonder found along the way and the age of wonder was, all along, within himself. In himself was original starlight.

  The Ring of Wonder

  A week after he was interred I dug from the roots of the great oak the ring that had been buried there for eighty-four years. I found it in a cigar tube that was rusted through. I cleaned it and read the ancient Latin inscribed on it: Astra castra Numen lumen: The stars my camp, God my lamp. I set it on my finger. It had once been too large for the Star Fisher when he was a boy, but it fit me perfectly. After a trillion miles through the cosmos the ring had come back into the light of day.

  The Star Fisher has went on from this world into the next one, but in his final months he gave to me the biography of his
dream. It is a slow evolution in the hearts and minds of men, this thing called wonder; slow to go and grow, but begin it we should, in hearts, souls and minds, here and there.

  As I was getting ready to leave I noticed a neighbor outside and walked over and asked him if he knew the man who owned this home. He said he did and understood he had died, that he was sorry to hear it. I asked him how well he knew him and he replied not very well, as he had just moved here, but there was something about the old man he couldn't explain and every time he met with him he was made to feel like he had met with a saint of sorts. I thanked him and went about my way. I smiled about what the man had said, that there was something unexplainable about the Star Fisher; something mysterious. I think it was the original starlight.

  A postcard

  The Journal of '64

  We all get these impressions, in mist and cloud, that our true being is hid within and also beyond the ignorant clay of our flesh, but I think the true impress comes back to us in dreams. This story began in a dream and ends with one. I will tell you the very last part of the dream now, as I have filled in all the other parts already.

  I received a postcard from the nursing home a month after his death. His journal had been found beneath the cushions of a couch in the common room. Knowing no other to send it to, they thought of me. It was his journal from late '63 through '64. I retrieved it and learned the truth of all he had told me during our talks. And then it all finally made perfect sense.

  In the middle of September in 1960, he lit out toward the big water. He had been to Rome when he was young, now it was time to see the Pacific. It would be a thousand mile trip in a Nash Rambler, while taking the time to see all he could along the way. On September 23 he was cruising a rural road near a mountain in Morgan, Utah when he had an accident and was taken to the hospital. They mended his bones, sutured his arteries and set him in a bed, where he slept, like Rip Van Winkle, for the next three years and nearly three months. Some said he would never wake, others said they didn't know. But he knew. He had to wake, for the dream was not completed. When he finally woke in December he had to learn how to walk, talk and live again. He went back home on a lonely train; an older, but still young, broken-but-mending, man.

  He had forgotten her up till then. He long ago had set her back away into the mystery. But she came back to him, the Indian summer dream girl, while he slept those three years in a hospital bed. She made him live and dream again. And he never let her go from then on.

  In the final entry of '64 he wrote:

  “She is my belonging and my wonder. And if I have to wait another century, I will wait. For patient is great love.”

  Eulogy for the Star Fisher

  The first thing he did upon arising in the morning, surrounded by old books and new light, was sit on his desk, put his feet in the chair, and see what there was in the pot that had simmered and slow-cooked all night. He asked of his dreams what had come of his mind while his body rested.

  The Star Fisher believed the highest purpose of life is to inspire souls, enlighten minds, and bring joy to hearts—perhaps joy that has been forgot; enlightenment yet begun to be re-remembered, and inspiration set aside. He believed that life was inspired starlight that had become manifest in living clay, and to him, the greatest inspiration was that life is a grand and bittersweet swirling sea of miracles and confusion that can be understood, but first it takes the knowledge of deep emotions to do so; when the dark depths are plumbed by the broken-hearted and the confused, then is when the knowledge of the miracle of life is perfected and after that, a partial mastery of our lives may be acquired.

  He said our mastery of life can only and ever be partial, for no man may fully master what is itself incomplete. And our chance of partial mastery can only be had by never giving up the three things most required for life: faith, hope and love. And all are bound to fail at least one on occasion.

  He believed the world's oceans are shallow, and it is more the imagination in men that makes them deep. He said the celestial heavens are but a glance away, and it is more the imagination in men that makes them far. He said it is so with all impossible-seeming things; that the imagination of man makes them seem impossible. . .

  Or possible.

  He took all his words from Life. She whispered them and he wrote them down. In truth, he was her secretary. She dictated. He wrote.

  When he was young his ambition was universal; to discover all the wonder here there is to discover. He grew to realize he would not achieve his ambition—there is just too much wonder for one small life and one little mind to discover. But he did not let that deter him in his efforts. And then, after many years of searching for all wonder, he met her and his great ambition was gained. He had finally discovered all the wonder there is in the entire universe.

  He was a simple man. He like very much the smell of pinewood fires and other trees burning, and he enjoyed watching them grow even better. He like gazing upon the stars for long periods of time and wondering what is out there. He imagined the starlit heavens are like a deep and dark wood wherein the Pegasus constellation was his camp. He went there often to get away. He was a man who loved a porch set toward the western shore, and a kerosene lantern lit just as the sun goes down.

  He thought, of all life forms, that stars are the second brightest—just after man. It was his opinion that of all animals here on this earth which come closest to matching man for a grand essence and singular peculiarity to the stars that made them—it would be the horse. And woman and equine together out-equal even the brightest of stars. But he realized it could be that he was partial about the matter.

  He considered the sound of a train horn to be among the most beautiful of sounds; he believed that horn calls to the deepest portion of our souls and serves well as reminder to men of some ancient and beautiful memory deep within. He thought each of us has at least one person who, by an inner knowledge and serendipitous nature, represents all the wonder capable of being known within us; wonder which can only be discovered because of having discovered them, and by that, discovering ourselves. He wondered also if we have not known these rare beings before, in some other time or place, but have forgotten when it was and how we once knew them.

  Whatever the truth of that, beauty should never be forgot, but too often is; and so we should remember it more often.

  He was a romantic and full-time seeker of beauty and found such an outlook and seeking—despite the easy sound of it—to be the most difficult of occupations for an earthling wayfarer. It was his studied opinion that beauty is not really so popular a theme here as it should be; we too often glorify beauty queens and disregard the beautiful souls.

  Love. It had been the most important part of his being all his life. He thought of the real formula for love; how it requires a philosophy that many refuse to seek and learn. He thought too many love affairs are true stories based on false hearts. He believed that love is the greatest fairy tale in this world, and if two would be brave and strong enough to slay the dragons, then two would then know love true and love would be won. He believed there were many who could be a prince if they would find their princess and that the earth does breed heroes. And true love takes two heroes. He believed it rare for two heroes to ever meet in the same place and fall in love. He believed the only real test of love was to give up all for it. And if they would do that, would gain all. He saw it as the greatest kind of poverty, that some would not give up the little for the lot; that they trade trinket for treasure.

  He reasoned that those who refuse to quit a losing proposition will lose and those who refuse to quit a winning proposition will win. So it matters very much what a person decides to begin and refuses to quit. And if they will quit love, then whatever they will not quit will not matter. And if they will not quit love, then whatever they do quit, will not matter. “That is the true formula for love,” he told me.

  He did, on occasion, way fare between the various constellations of the Zodiac, but eventually and always
found his way back to camp. When he was not writing down dictated words, he spent his time fishing. He was a poet and a dreamer and a fisherman of the stars.

  Postscript:

  I am just the delivery man. And I have delivered now to you, as best I could, what was given me to deliver. As you can see, I got it to you right on time, which is now. Every word was delivered by the bright, sweet lamp of original starlight where, until you throw your line out, you cannot know what you might reel back in.

  He had been a fisherman of the stars ever since he was a boy. He threw his line into the sea of stars and fished back out the brightest of them. But he never kept what he caught, and threw them back for others to come and fish out later—except for one. There was one star he kept, having caught it many years before. This is the story of the bright star caught by the star fisherman.

  When they were young they had fished the heavens for a great dream, and caught it. And then she died and became for him the brightest star in the night sky. Then he dreamt and was given the order to complete the dream they had dreamt when young. Now he has joined her, and they are a binary star-crossed lover's constellation in the newly-named constellation Star Fisher. Just look for the man with a fishing pole and the woman with Indian summer eyes. Here is the biography of their dream and the eternally-unfinished, yet perfectly-ended, love story.