Death Star

I love doing photography because I can control everything. But at the same moment, I control pretty much nothing. I don't control what locations or website templates are available or how long my stomach stays full from the food I feed it. I don't control how big my hands are or really how fast they can type. I don't decide the weather or the moon or tides or the sun and stars and most of the time I'm just fine with that--just fine to enjoy the sun and stars and tides the way they are. As is. Like the section of the store DI. Large As Is. A star could go there, maybe. And even if it was dead I would care for it. Even if it was on its last dying star breath I would want it to know how valuable it was, even if there are millions of kajillions of other ones that appear exactly like it. I would want to give that star a voice, let it say the final words of what it is like to be a star, a dying star on its last star breath, in the Large As Is section of DI. I would hold it up from the cement floors, turn off all the fluorescent lights and unplug the array of dingy lamps, and I would cradle the dying star in my small human arms. I would sing it things if it wanted, but mostly I would listen.
Mostly I would pay attention, and give that star the decency of someone being there when she died.

And maybe that's what we're all afraid of--dying alone, gasping our last gulp of oxygen without fanfare and just peacing out, unnoticed and unrevived. I don't think we're afraid that no one would care as much as we're afraid that no one would be there. We want holding in those last gulps maybe more than anytime.