After writing yesterday’s blog, I drove to Dallas and stayed the night with a friend. This afternoon I finished writing a travel-writing story (or at least completed the first draft) at a local Starbucks, then hit the road for Houston, which is where I am now. I love driving, especially in my car (Tom Collins), but the road has completely worn me out. It’s just after midnight now, and my body is absolutely done.

I’m staying here in Houston with some swing dancing friends, with whom I’m discussing swing dancing business. I arrived several hours ago, and although we didn’t intend to “dive in” until tomorrow, we’ve been chatting and working all night. It’s been good–I loved the part where we went for tacos–but now my brain has joined my body. It’s absolutely done too.

For most of the drive this afternoon I was covered in my emotions. Sometimes this happens when life catches up to me. It’s like most the time I have a grip, and then all of a sudden I don’t. I get overwhelmed. I think, I’m almost forty–I’m single–I don’t know where my life is going.

Last night in Dallas I stepped outside my friend’s apartment to look at the stars. It was hard to see them in the bright city, and there were a lot of clouds, but I found a few of the major players–The Big Dipper, The North Star, The Northern Cross. Oh, and Jupiter–you can’t miss Jupiter lately. (It’s the first bright “star” you’ll see in the evening if you’re facing south.) I did the same thing tonight when I got to Houston. Again facing south, first I found Jupiter, then Scorpius, then Saturn.

There’s something comforting about this for me, the idea that I can drive five or ten hours from Van Buren–go almost anywhere, really–and still feel at home. The sky really is beginning to feel this way to me–familiar. It’s like how you can wake up in the middle of the night and navigate your way to the restroom with your eyes closed because you live there. I don’t know anything about Houston. I’d be lost without my GPS. But I can look at the sky and know right where I am–directly under Arcturus–because I live here.

In the universe, that is.

Anyway, when I was driving earlier and my emotions showed up uninvited, all I could think about was the stars. I was in five lanes of traffic, my mind running every bit as fast as any car on the road, and the constellations were the only thing that sounded comforting. I wanted to see Cassiopeia so badly. I longed for the quiet and the peace that she brings me. What is that? I guess she reminds me that there’s no hurry in the heavens, that she’s seen it all and, “Baby, you’re doing so much better than you realize.”

Alas, I obviously couldn’t find Cassiopeia this afternoon. The sky was too bright, too blue, too filled with fluffy white clouds. (Ick, barf, I prefer the dark.) My friend Bonnie said, “Give the sun a chance. It’s a star too.” Now I’m thinking that just as there’s day and night literally, there’s also day and night emotionally. Like the sun, one minute we’re up, the next minute we’re down. Our perspectives change constantly. There’s nothing wrong with this. The constellations get turned around once a day, so why can’t you and I? Under heaven, there’s room enough for everything–the sun, the moon and stars, and all our emotions. Yes, the universe–our home–is large enough to hold every bit of us.