The Length of Platinum...

The North Star is the only star in the sky that doesn't move. It's the traveler's guide, a celestial constant. If the Earth rotates secured to its axis, then what secures us as we spin sometimes uncontrollably through our lives? Is there anything that stays constant in this world? If people grow and mature then can we even trust ourselves, our morals, or our identities to ground us somehow? Have you ever had a revelation where suddenly you see the world in a completely different light? Or a Joycean epiphany, one of those "Like, Whoa, Scoob!" moments? You know, even when you see the lovers kissing instead of the chalice???

Do you have those milestone people who you need to stay the same in order to point out to you where you have been and to lead you to whom you will become? In Sartre's Nausea Anny tells Antoine: "I need you to exist and not to change. You're like the platinum wire they keep in Paris or somewhere in the neighbourhood [...] I'm glad to know that it exists, that it measures the exact ten-millionth part of a quarter of a meridian" (184-5). Do you have those friends, friends since birth practically, who you don't even have to see but who you touch base with now and again? It's like how Carrie sees Big as "the Chrysler Building," someone whom she can't picture out of her life. I, too, feel that there are just some people who are markers, some people who I couldn't bear to see walk away and never come back. It's not that you have to see them all the time but, like the platinum wire, it's just good to know that they're still breathing somewhere.