Nights drenched in light

[M]Y BRAIN IS TO BLAME for the slow pace of my walks.

Most of the reason is cerebral palsy, but the part I want to write about today is the space in my brain where my dreams run much faster than my legs move.

Sometimes, almost always when I walk after dark to avoid the summer heat, the dreams which move through this space in my brain cause me to look at the sky.

A few nights ago, July 4, the moon was a light ray away from full.

My neighbors put on a great fireworks show, which I enjoyed from my driveway when I neared the road.

I looked the other way on return trips, toward the halo of light around the moon, and I still think earth’s satellite glowed brighter.

When I look up on nights drenched in light like this July 4 was, I think about the Apollo 11 astronauts.

What a view they had in July 1969, while they watched the distant planet they called home spin in the vastness of space.

Space is cool, and it has always intrigued me.

I wonder at it sometimes.

I wonder about my place in it.

I wonder at the fact Someone powerful enough to speak all of it into existence would create me, too, and then choose to love me.

It is special to stand under a starlit sky and picture just how microscopic you are in the expanse of the universe, but at the same time ponder how massively you’re loved by the One who created it all.

I’ve looked at the sky for hours some nights.

I guess I get lost, sometimes in thought and sometimes in dreams.

Dreams hardly ever wait until I’m asleep to make their way through my mind.

Most wind across my neural networks while I stare at stars.

I’ve thought about what it would be like to flip my view, to see the sights the Apollo astronauts saw while they floated in the firmament.

I think part of space’s specialness, at least in my eyes, comes from the fact you can’t help but float through it.

I like to think you just float and enjoy the view.

I imagine such a view would be unimaginable.

I guess there’s little to no restriction on movement there, which appeals to me because my movement is so restricted here.

I’ve long wondered what it would be like to be weightless, and not just because I’m overweight.

Since I’ve lost some weight, though, movement is easier.

I bet it’s a cinch when you weigh nothing.

A quick Google search told me NASA simulates weightlessness in a pool inside the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in Houston.

I was not surprised.

I swam today, for the first time in a long time.

It made me tired, but it also made me remember why I liked to pass so much time in the pool.

I move much easier, without a cane and with more freedom, in the water than I do on land.

Water takes off weight.

A walk in water is less of a walk and more of a float.

Maybe it’s a little like the float Apollo 11’s astronauts enjoyed when they lived a dream which has made its way through my brain on many nights drenched in light.

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This post is a response to Sue’s prompt, which is “space.”