Counting Stars Until Blur

Look up. The sky is full of them.

Begin to count. One. The bright one near the horizon, first to appear in a darkening sky. Two. The companion beside it, slightly fainter, whose name you do not know. Three. Higher, a cluster, three or four close together in a pattern that suggests a shape you almost get. Four. Five.

Do not rush. The stars have been here long before counting. They will be here long after. There is no record of this. No correct total you need to reach. This counting is for you. To give the mind a task simple enough to do at this hour but large enough to fill it.

Six. Seven. The sky is getting darker the longer you look. The eyes are adjusting. Stars that were invisible a minute ago are becoming visible as the dark adapts to them. The sky is more than it looked. much more.

Eight. Nine. A bright one, one of the planets perhaps, holding its position while the true stars slowly wheel. Ten.

How many have you counted? Enough. More than enough. The numbers are becoming softer now. They are losing their edges, which is numbers telling you something about the state of the mind that is trying to use them.

Eleven. Twelve. The eyes are heavy. That is fine. Heavier with each number. Thirteen. Fourteen. The sky and the bed are sharing space. The warmth of the bed and the immensity of the sky are both present, which does not make sense, which is how you know the mind is drifting.

Fifteen. The stars are beginning to blur. Not because they moved. Because the eyes that watch them are softening. The lens of the eye and the lens of attention both going soft at the same time. Good. This is good.

Sixteen. The number does not quite land. It arrives and drifts. Seventeen is forming and dissolving. The counting is becoming more sound than meaning, which is numbers becoming lullaby, which is the mind releasing its analytical function.

The stars are still up there. Still occupying their positions in the vast structure of the visible universe, each one enormous and far away and burning in the dark at distances your sleeping mind will not try to calculate because your sleeping mind has better things to do.

The stars are doing what they do. Ancient and undamaged and holding their light across the dark.

Let the count go.

Eighteen. Nineteen.

Close your eyes and keep the stars behind them. They stay for a moment, faint impressions. Then even those dissolve.

Sleep is just below the stars. Drift down to it.

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