Tonight, I’m sitting here wrapped in loose, knit layers, feeling cozy in my cold (70F) house – no, I haven’t turned my heater on yet, despite the nighttime dropping of desert winter temperatures – and I’m listening to the rain, and I thought I’d share with you my proverbial heart’s desire. Because we’re in the moment. We’re sitting beneath something spectacular.

It’s the Geminids, my friends. The Geminid meteor shower. I’ve been thinking about it all year!

It’s been one of my dreams to visit a dark-sky area to view the Geminids. Of all the (30) annually occurring meteor showers, this is the one I’ve most wanted to see. The winter constellation of Gemini is one of my favorite constellations, and its twin stars, Pollux and Castor, are two of my favorite stars!

It would feel especially magickal to view a meteor shower in the winter, I think. To be outside, in the dark, in the cold, watching for meteors. It’s cold in space.

Could I make this happen? I don’t know. I don’t drive on the freeway (the spot I’ve pinpointed is 32 miles away), and I’d want to settle under the stars at 2am. It’ll be December 13-14, Monday night/Tuesday morning, so… not a viable consideration for most of my friends, as they’ll have to go to work on Tuesday. (Whereas I won’t. I’m taking all of next week off for vacation.)

It wouldn’t be just the Geminids, either. There’ll be a lot to see! From a dark-sky location, I’ll be able to see stars that are obscured by the halo of city lights, constellations in their entirety, maybe, rather than just the alpha stars and other large stars. Even beyond that, there’s the band of our Milky Way galaxy! If I could see that one day, too. And while I’m on the topic of cosmic bucket-list items, I should mention the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights).

Aside: I like to fantasize that somewhere next door in the Andromeda galaxy, our closest neighboring galaxy at 2.5 million light-years away, there’s at least one planet alive with sentient life forms, including intelligent beings. Beings who, unlike us, have the technology needed to leave their galaxy. That they exist, and that they’ve come to Milky Way and visited Earth.

I watched a video on YouTube that explained how the Andromeda galaxy has a history of devouring other galaxies, and how ours will be next. In roughly 4 billion years, Andromeda will collide with Milky Way, and the Milkomeda galaxy will be born.

To think that Andromeda is just one galaxy. According to current NASA reports, there are around 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. (“Observable” being the operative word. There are 200 billion galaxies that we know of.)

The vastness of the universe is overwhelming. I’ll say it again and again: I can’t imagine that in the entire Universe, the only sentient life that exists is here on Earth, on this tiny planet in this small galaxy.

I’ll share this with you, too: Two of my favorite ways to meditate are clearing my mind while gazing into fire, and clearing my mind while gazing at this picture. It’s mesmerizing to me, artistic renderings of the planets lined up in order, for comparison… Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, and then the Giant Planets on the other side of the asteroid belt: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Here’s another pic:

The sheer size of Jupiter! No wonder we can see him so large and bold in the sky. I’ve admired Jupiter in the bright morning blue sky as well as in the dark of night.

I’m forever in love with the Cosmos, though I’ve still yet to star-gaze from the backyard (since Salem’s death). I’ve tried. I just can’t. Watching the night sky for meteors 32 miles away from here, though, might create a different story. It might be a good way to return to that practice.

We shall see.

I hope this finds you all doing well, dreaming your dreams, and hopefully living them, too.