Make Your Own Constellations

The beauty of creating inside cultural references

Hello, Starshine Baskers!

During summer I become a different creature. Instead of a life of rigid schedules, alarms, and a typical diurnal sleep schedule, I wake up when the sunlight streaming through my window hits my face, putter around, walk the dog, run errands, make something, or don’t, take a fat nap after lunch, and then turn into an energetic maniac making my children ask what’s wrong with me, staying up well past midnight.

The highlights of my summer days happen at night. Once the sun has gone to bed, the outside temperature feels like a warm hug from a cousin you haven’t seen for too long. When my mostly grown children happen to be home, we hang out outside on the grass or our covered porch and talk, laugh, look up at the sky and create our own constellations.

I love knowing the names of stars and seeing the same patterns in the sky that connect me to my seafaring ancestors, and perhaps even the earliest humans.

But I also love making new connections in the skies and in my children's hearts. Of course, we have our inside jokes, but even more precious are the inside cultural touchstones we make.

This haiku comic is adapted from my book Wild Divinity, available wherever books are sold, including in the Weirdo Poetry Shop.

Instead of seeing shapes in the clouds, we create new patterns with the celestial dot-to-dot as we bask in the starshine.

It’s easy to forget that we make our own culture. While the job of artists is to critique and create culture, you don’t need to be a Basquiat to shape the culture of your family, friends, or workplace. All you need to do is be willing to co-create new references. You and the people around you are the context for the culture you create.

My children still ask me to retell the story I made up one summer night while we watched a meteor shower from a tent about an alien who came to Earth just to try s’mores.

This is likely the last summer I will have with all four children under the same roof with me for the whole summer. Each day I’m grateful for all the time we’ve spent making constellations, sharing stories, and laughing at jokes that make no sense to anyone else.

As my children grow, I become a different fixture in their lives. Instead of being the chief storyteller and activity motivator, I am a lucky observer, enjoying their stories, trying to understand their jokes, and basking in the starshine emanating from their eager souls.

Maybe tonight, we will get to make more constellations together. You never know when something happens for the last time.

Thanks for reading!

The stars in today’s comics are all sea stars photographed in 1917 by Ludwig Heinrich Philipp Döderlein. You can read more about his work on The Public Domain Review.

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Cheers,