The Palisadian-Post presents an homage to Will Rogers’ column, “Will Rogers Says,” with a column by Palisadian Jimmy Dunne—on life in the “greatest town in America.”
‘Far Away in Our Milky Way’
With new flooring being installed in our home last week, my wife and I took a mini vacation in the Santa Barbara area for a few days.
We were staying at a cottage on a golf course.
It was about 11 o’clock at night, and I was about to go to bed. I took a walk down the middle of the fairway of the golf hole right out the back of our cottage.
I did something I hadn’t done in a long time.
I looked up.
I just stood there.
With the lack of lights, the sky lit up with stars. At first, I could see a couple dozen. The longer I looked, the more of them I could see.
Over a hundred against the pitch-black sky came into focus.
I was standing there looking up at our next-door neighbors in the sky, many, many trillions of miles away—thinking how they’re just a handful of the 200 billion suns in our own Milky Way alone.
I was trying to put my arms around how our Milky Way is one of 100 billion galaxies—and how everything in the universe is moving farther and farther away from us at unfathomable speeds.
Walking down the fairway, I was thinking about how the only thing keeping me from floating away into the sky was this magical, mystical, invisible force of gravity, pinning me down to my hometown turf.
I focused on one sun. It’s like it was calling out to me.
I imagined one of its planets circling around it, just like our earth.
I wondered if there’s some kind of life force, with some version of a brain, doing the exact same thing as me on its planet, looking out at its neighbors in its sky—and wondering if there’s a me out there.
I’d bet we’d like each other.
It was quiet. So wonderfully quiet.
And, at that moment, the fears, the worries and the challenges of the day—were suns away.
The sky has a way of pulling you out of the when and into the now.
It’s astounding how when you can’t hear a single thing, you can hear and feel every thing.
I could feel the cool mist in the night air on my face.
I heard a lonely, distant owl softly hooting its yearning for companionship.
I heard the tree branches ever so gently bending to the calming rhythm of the winds.
I was swept away revisiting childhood days, trying to focus on distant memories of who I was and what mattered then to me.
Walking along, I thought of my mom and dad, who both passed away in recent years. I could see their beautiful faces—remembering how they looked at me and felt about me.
I can feel that those moments of clarity of my parents are fading. With each passing month, their voices seem to be quieter—and moving farther and farther away.
Away.
The minute I turned around and headed back to our cottage, gravity began pulling me back into the hurry and detail of the day.
It’s funny. I don’t remember what I did before that walk, or after. But I remember the walk.
I have to find a way to take the time to look up.
To find that sky, no matter where I am.
A sky that reminds us all how fragile and precious this place and time we have truly is.
Jimmy Dunne is modern-day Renaissance Man; a hit songwriter (28 million hit records), screenwriter/producer of hit television series, award-winning author, an entrepreneur—and a Palisadian “Citizen of the Year.” You can reach him at j@jimmydunne.com.
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