We Are Made of Stardust: Beta Stage, a Love Song for the Only Home We’ve Ever Known
Beta Stage
Stardust
Our Own Outer Space
Come sit with me for a minute. I want to show you something.
Most of the hydrogen in your body goes back to the first moments of the universe, about 13.8 billion years ago. The carbon in your skin, the oxygen in your lungs, and the calcium in your bones were made later, inside stars. The iron in your blood right now came from stars that exploded long before our sun was born. You don’t just live in the cosmos. You’re the cosmos with a face.
I was thinking about that when I wrote Beta Stage. “That familiar face, our own outer space.” When I look at you, I’m looking at the oldest light there is.
Now look up. The sunlight on your skin left the sun about eight minutes ago. On a clear night far from city lights, you can see a faint smudge called the Andromeda galaxy, and that light has been traveling for about 2.5 million years. It left long before our species existed, and tonight it reaches you.
Out of everything we’ve ever pointed a telescope at, this is still the only place we know of where anything is alive. “So outta this world, but only home we’ve ever known.” I mean that literally.
Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago, and life showed up here more than 3.5 billion years ago. Every cell in you comes from an unbroken line that goes back that far. Every one of your ancestors, all the way back, lived long enough to pass life on. Think about how many times that could have gone the other way.
About two billion years ago, one cell swallowed a bacterium and didn’t digest it. It kept it, and the two lived together. That guest became your mitochondria, the tiny engines powering you while you read this. You carry a two-billion-year-old partnership in every cell.
Under the forest floor, threads of fungi wrap around tree roots and trade minerals for sugar. Plants and fungi have been in that deal for over 400 million years. “Plant, flower, and food. Just dig in.”
Out in the ocean, plankton too small to see make about half of the oxygen produced on this planet. Humpback whales sing songs that change from season to season, and new songs can spread from one population to another across an entire ocean. Laysan albatross pairs often stay together for life. They spend months apart over open water, then find each other again at the same nesting ground.
“I don’t really know her ways. I just try to abide.” That’s honestly where I stand. I didn’t build any of this. “It’s not mine, it’s her control.” I just get to stand in it with you.
So camp under the stars with me sometime. Bring someone you love. On a truly dark night you can see a couple thousand stars at once. Each one is a sun, and right now some of them are making the atoms of whatever comes next.
This is the beta stage. We’re still here, and we’re still learning her.
“You’ll see she loves you. In due time.”
With love, from a throne she only lent me,
KxngLeon
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