Two of my students are from Baden –Würrtemberg in Germany. One, a lanky 6’ 4”, 16 year old, initiated a study group in Astronomy with the question, “Why do things stay where they are in the sky?”
He, one of his younger friends, and I were standing in the drive, one bitter cold night, observing the constant flame of planets and the twinkle of the more distant stars. They would point to groups of stars and ask if they had names, and I would recite for them – Pleiades, Cassiopeia, Ursa Major and Minor - and the stories that the ancient Greek mariners told to one another on the wine-dark sea. My German friend pointed to Orion, telling me he and his brother called it ‘the arrow’, and as I tried to recall the names of the stars in Orion’s belt, and we gazed intently at the sky, a shooting star blazed through the three, like a sword being thrust home into some imagined scabbard hanging at Orion’s side.
They gasped, looked at one another and said together, “Did you see it!” and whooped in delight. My German friend suddenly became rooted to the spot and shaking with anticipation whirled towards me and said, “What’s the word? How do you say …” and gestured wildly towards the heavens.
“A shooting star?”
“Yes! Shooting star!” and he and his friend leapt away laughing.
They danced in the night. Two young men given over to the abandonment of joy for the seeing and the naming of a new thing, two young men leaping for delight beneath the moon and stars for having seen for the first time in their lives, a shooting star.
