Summer stars

The flags fly in distress on Warrenton Avenue.

Every morning I drive Hartford’s West end on the way to work.  Hartford is a sad, strange, crumbling town. It was the center of the American intellectual universe in the 1870s when Mark Twain and HB Stowe lived down the road and American publishing  and insurance empires thrived on the banks of the Connecticut  river.

The large Victorian mansions have gone to seed; their decaying hulks still lurk amid the  empty lots and homeless shelters in our northern end.

  The West End is a little different.  The large houses are still in good repair, Mark Twain’s house still boasts a lovely multi colored slate tile roof.  The   mansions’ occupants work in the city and have  money enough  to maintain  their houses in good repair.  The neighborhood  is  populated  by restless, radical people who send their children to private school. They hang signs on their houses, “ End This Endless War “ and   “US out of Iraq.”   Rainbow flags adorn a fair number of homes.

I am startled by the number of American flags hanging  from the ramparts.  They are universally upside down, the sign of warning, distress. One must  never  sail by a boat with a reversed  flag, someone  is in trouble.

         The flags hang upside down. Someone is in trouble.

I haven’t  been sleeping these nights. I am uncertain why. The high dose steroids I  restarted to fight the Graft Versus host disease play havoc with my internal clock.  My leg cramps strike about 3 AM, catapulting me from bed.

         Doesn’t matter. It’s 3 AM and I am up for the day, ready to prowl the internet,  seek solace in the hot tub.

         I  once dismissed this 400  gallon tub of fermenting water as the ultimate bourgeois purchase.  When I see a hot tub, my mind  flashes to the ancient joke:

How many Californians does it  take to screw in a  light blub?

Californians don’t screw in  light bulbs they screw in hot tubs.

We lack sufficient  property to  frolic nude in  our hot tub, but the 101 degree water kills my leg cramps as efficiently  as an injection of  succinylcholine. 

So for this, I am grateful.

         I lie in the hot tub and examine the stars. At some point I suggested  placing  the tub in a  gazebo- like enclosure. Cyn declined, and she was right. Contemplating the stars is crucial when undergoing hydrotherapy in the hot tub. 

         I think of New Zealand, where we  biked a few  years ago.  The stars there are different. I finally saw my beloved Alpha Centuri, the star closest to earth, the subject of Science fiction intrigue. The stars there are upside down. The constellations were created  in the North and didn’t translate well to the southern hemisphere.  All the constellations stand on their heads

Orion skids across the sky on his skull  in New Zealand.

The stars are upside down. They are in trouble.

I was a nerd. I was a geek.

I love astronomy.

I glance up for comfort and the stars are all wrong.

All wrong in West Hartford  at 4 AM on a late August night.

All wrong.
Shakespeare wrote of the terror when day switches places with night, it’s how I feel when the wrong stars appear in my troubled skies.

And yesterday the owl  did sit

Even at noon-day upon the marketplace,

Hooting and shrieking.

Vega should float serenity at the apex of the sky, along with Deneb and Altair, and yet my summer friends are absent. 

from this brave overhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire. It appears no other thing to me than a vile and pestilent conflagration of vapor.

Orion the hunter says hi.

Orion should not be saying hi. Orion is my winter friend; He informs me snow should be on the ground.   I wait every late fall for the Big E   Exposition  and for  the  Hunter and Sirius, his trusty dog , to patrol the frosty night sky.

 These are difficult times

The very stars are askew.

"The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
 That ever I was born to set it right!"

My universe is  altered, changed these days. I function, but function in pain.   Orion walks the night sky.

 One can see winter star in summer.  All it takes is a little Graft Versus Host disease, a little mouth pain, a little muscle cramp, a little existential terror that one’s condition will never change. At 4 AM, the stars in the August sky match those seen in winter at dusk.

They never mentioned this in the transplant brochure, that  an allogenic  transplant will make  winter stars appear on hot desultory summer nights.

One day  I’ll feel better

One day the stars will return to normal.

Until then, Orion and Sirius will patrol my summer  skies.