PROXIMA

by hci56/SAI

originally published: Feb 15, 2024
last updated: Feb 15, 2024

You cannot see Proxima Centauri with the naked eye. But I got the chance to see it when I travelled to Australia around fifteen years ago to visit my aunt. In the dead of night I snuck out to a dry, desolate place, my trusty telescope in hand.

I wasn't there to see Proxima specifically. I only wanted to get away from the shadow that seemed to follow me - and to observe the lights, any of them. Comets, constellations, and far-away nebulae - but at the end of my observations all of these paled in comparison to Proxima.

In terms of appearance Proxima is a faint little runt of a star, overshadowed even by its siblings Alpha Centauri A and B, which actually are visible with the naked eye. Together, these three form the right hoof of the constellation which appeared many years ago when unknown, unnatural means immortalized the poor centaur Chiron in a cosmic painting, like how painters would immortalize their subjects in walls and ceilings. Of course, that story is a myth - stars are not paintings, but living, breathing, moving things. They pulse and hover for many centuries. I think it's dishonest to assume otherwise. They are ancient creatures, made up of hydrogen and helium. They are the creators of the universe. They answer to none. Some of them die, exhausted and alone. Some of them turn into vengeful monsters, literal stains on the fabric of reality. Our own star gives us life, but in a few billion years it shall give us death. So, I fearfully respect the stars, and I respect Proxima no less, even though of all the stars it is one of the smallest.

As to how I came across it in the first place: Alpha Centauri A and B captured my eye when I chanced to gaze on them, and I angled my telescope toward them, adjusting a little to see their lowly sibling, Proxima Centauri. Its rays diffracted into a brilliant cross.

The star is so close, only 4 light-years away from us. So close, and yet so far. From this vantage point Proxima would seem very crowded around with stars, but I know that an oppressive abyss surrounds and separates the star even from its brothers. What a depressing situation! But we are in our own oppressive abyss, so that, even if we made a ship that could go at the speed of light, it would take us four whole years to go to meet Proxima.

With that despondent thought I put away the telescope and drove back to sleeping civilization. But that experience stuck with me, as none of Australia's other wonders did. Ever since then, I haven't seen Proxima Centauri because it isn't visible from the northern hemisphere. Its pull remains, though.

I live in a distant place, with no houses or architecture to harm my view of far-away skies. So, to take advantage of this, I moved the piano to the south-facing window of my house ten years ago. Afterwards, I would spend many nights, in pure midnight darkness, playing a song as I gaze into the starry night sky. It is a song that I composed myself, and it is forever unfinished. Currently, its duration is over 5 hours, and it is still not finished. I write a few verses every few months, and during nights when I don't have to wake up early the next day, I would play the whole composition, from start to finish. Every time, I time it exactly so that the song's ending meets the first hint of sunrise. I named the song "Proxima", but its first page gives its title as a cross, with another smaller cross overlaid on it, so that it looks like an eight-pointed asterisk with very long diagonal lines. It calls into mind the brilliant cross in the night sky.

I never play the composition for anyone else. No one else would want to hear it anyway. I have no friends, and my family is absent. There are only two people who I would've played even a single verse for. One of them is my aunt in Australia, the relative I visited fifteen years ago, who died from a stroke six years ago.

The other is my wife. My wife had a radiant face whose light would have diffracted like Proxima's light if I thought to look at it with a telescope. At the funeral that light seemed to shine still, from the coffin. Kneeling and weeping I looked up at it, eyes blurred from tears, and the crucifix that hung from the ceiling seemed to take the shape of a bloody, wooden star, its lower ray reaching out to touch my wife's body.

It was because of my wife's death that I went to visit my aunt. My aunt was the only member of my family who was ever good to me, and upon learning of my situation she invited me to Australia, plane tickets paid and all. Of all who were close to me, she was the only one who didn't blame me. I would have had it that any one of them died but her.

In Australia, she tried to cheer me up by taking me to see many spots. But I, ungrateful to her (understandably, I hope you will agree, considering my grieving state!), would pay attention to none of it. She never grew angry at me though, and if she was disappointed she never showed it. Like they say, though, "all's well that ends well". And it ended well. I discovered the existence of my cosmic partner then.

Long I wished to dance with Proxima. Without a doubt I knew - and still know - that Proxima is where all good souls are now. In the humblest star, which is still enormously bright and eternal; in the place that is reachable, yet unreachable, almost a mockery of miserable hope - but still reachable. When my wife's and aunt's souls released themselves from their battered bodies they took the form of stardust. Every little unnatural distortion of light is their ghosts beckoning at me to look up and south, towards Proxima.

It is good that the cross is what I chose as Proxima's symbol, for it symbolizes the intersection of the divine and the lowly, the immortal and the mortal, the unknowable and knowable - even of death and life. Simply an example of how all good things resolve to good little coincidences!

They were immortalized in this one thing. As the Greeks believed in Chiron's immortalization, so I believe this, and I don't think I am less intelligent than the smartest man in Athens. So perhaps I was wrong in my thoughts - a star can organize itself to be a painting as well.

Well, later, in a field of stars, in the midst of shrub-like trees marked with crosses, whose branches flow to the south, I think I'll write the next verse of "Proxima".