to LA - starry, starry nite

the endless nite did give marathon man something to cherish. the sky outside the cabin window: the clouds below appeared shimmering white from some reflection of the moonlight. the big dipper showed up on the left side of the window as big as could seen anywhere on earth. the flickering lights from the airplane wing did its part to distract his nite-sky observation. but how would you imagine if suddenly the lights went off , or perhaps the wing dropped off? unimaginable! he'd better of to shun out the wing-light distraction and capture whatever the window view offered.

he did the star-gazing for around 20 minutes, and at one point he saw a shooting stars, dropped toward the earth, but just for a split second, it disappeared just right there and then before his eyes.

he went to watch some more tv docu.

then asked the stewardess to help flatten out his seat, so he could try to shut his eyes lying down.

he did that for about an hour, nothing like sleeping, as the mind and the heart couldn't take on the resting mode. perhaps due to the cabin pressure.

when he opened his eyes, the window outside was starry, with a pitch dark sky. much darker than the one 1 hour ago, where the moonlight played prominently on the scene.

now, seemed the moon hid itself somewhere.

the most prominent constellation out there was the scorpio, with it's head raring right up toward the "sky". star dust spread across a big strip of the sky which we call milky way. everything that hanged there represented everything that a man could dream of.... a speckle of those lights there boggled the mind and intimidated the ego.

suddenly, a voice came from behind. he was taken aback by the stewardess asking him whether he wanted some chocolate.

"oh.... nice..." he took a piece.

"you are gazing at the stars ha? anything interesting?"

"ya... quite amazing. up here, 39000 ft high, you can really see the sky is all around us, you see many stars down at the horizon.... which you normally won't get to see on ground level."

"ya... i like watching the stars myself when i'm off-duty. and i always wonder whether nature has a mind of its own."

"you mean there's a GOD?"

"maybe, but i mean, whether things like earth, stars.... anything in the universe has a say in what they want to be."

"a star is star only at the moment you see it. when time passes by, there won;t be the star......"

"you mean anything is only anything for that moment of time you recognise it?"

"yes. nothing is anything when anything is nothing."

"you sound very philosophical. we can continue our discussion when you arrive in LA.... here's my number....."

the 14-hr non-stop flight from singapore to LA was supposed to be a non-event, sleepless drugery, and this time, it begged to differ.