4 Filler

One thing I like about this town is that people sleep in the evening. When I go out in the yard at 4 PM, there will be lots of people walking. There will be cars running along the street and somedays, even trucks pass by. This time, it was very lonely.

I went outside and sat down on one of the swings my dad built for Harper. It was gray, but now, the top was rusting.

The song on my iPod stopped playing and I realize it reached the last of the album. I hit the repeat button and the intro played again. The album is called Souvlaki and was made by a band named Slowdive.

In January 28, 2007 my dad gave me a telescope for a gift. A small, compact one. I used it to watch the sky every time it got dark. Soon enough, I would learn to map the stars and name constellations like Big Dipper and harder to find ones like Lynx and Monoceros.

When there was a full moon, everyone would gather in the backyard and take turns using the telescope. Harper was still a baby then. Three nights later, I asked dad why we kept seeing the same craters. He said we're only really seeing one side. I asked him why and he said there is a dark side to it and because of something called tidal locking, we will never get to see it - unless we personally went there. That made me want to go to the moon.

Tonight, the sky was very bright. Another full moon. I like to imagine I still have the telescope so what I'd do is cup my hands like a circle and start looking at it. Kind of stupid really, since my hands can't magnify anything, but at least it resembled my telescope.

The white door creaked and I look back to see my mom come out. She had my jacket in her hand.

"Honey, it's cold out here, are you okay?"

"I'm okay."

"You sure?"

"I'm okay."

She gave me the jacket and sat down on one of the seats. I continued watching the moon.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" she says. "Remember when we used to hang out here with your dad and he and Harper would run around like crazy. I miss that."

"Yea. And Harper would bump her head on the fence." I say.

"Yea. Harper would bump her head on the fence and cry real hard until you kissed her on the cheek. Remember that? She liked it when you kiss her on the cheeks. Oh my god." mom says, her voice alternating between a shiver and a laugh.

She touched my hair and started caressing it. I hate when people touch me, even dad sometimes, but when mom does it, I feel safe.

"It's getting cold honey, we should go inside."

I was still looking at the moon.

"And your head looks like a dog's dinner. We should get you cut." she says finally walking back to the house.

I got tired of looking at the moon so I started looking for Hydra.

In all honesty, I don't find constellations very compelling. They're just stars made by people to look interesting like, Hydra for example. From the ground, it looks like a very long snake, but it isn't really; just a cluster of stars people made to look so. Humans are very curious creatures and because of this, they tend to look for order in things, even when there is none. It's a double-edged sword. Oftentimes, they do find something, like the molecules in a body, or the behavior of photons in a double-slit experiment, but usually, people are mistaken, and what happens when they are is that their statements become stretched out through time; ultimately becoming part of history's pseudoscientific ephemera.

It was clouding tonight and looking for constellations was very hard so I did not find Hydra at all. I did find Cancer, which is just somewhere besides Hydra, and I felt good because I know Hydra was still there, I just couldn't see it.