Sodium vapor, excited by electricity glows in a particular shade of orange. Mercury vapor, equally excited by electrical currents is greenish in hue. From a distance, electricity-zapped gasses, trapped in bulbs, may resemble stars, gems, or other apparently small, sparkly things. As a child, I always imagined distant streetlights to be stars: background environmental excitement for whatever childhood adventures I had planned for the copious number of Star Wars action figures occupied my bedroom. I had quite a collection, and as an adult (sometimes seized by something akin go nostalgia) I possess a growing collection of updated, snazzy, hyper-detailed action figures: I don’t play with them in the way I did as a child, but they do make the area around my computer a bit more user-friendly. Whenever I see street-lights, aglow in the darkness, I imagine the scores of oddly orange stars, serving as dramatic backdrops to childhood adventures involving re-named and re-contextualized science fiction characters made out of rigid, brittle hunks of plastic. (The newer figures are made of plastic/vinyl composites.) Sodium vapor, excited by electricity doesn’t really look star-like (unless you suspend disbelief, and just ignore such inconveniences as accuracy) but when seen in the right way, constellations appear. I notice this as I walk or ride through night-lit stretches of the city. On occasion I name various street-lamps or wall-mounted sources of illumination. They bear typically Chippesque names, derived from ancient Egyptian mythology. They bear the sorts of alien names that a starfaring culture might come up with, never mind their suspicious similarities to a starfaring culture created by George Lucas. I took this picture, more than a year ago, as I walked with Corey from Quest Internet Services to the apartment he shared with an artist/art student with a penchant for depicting hermaphroditic nudes in a rather colorful (in the chromatic sense) manner. There were no naked hermaphrodites anywhere in the vicinity of this picture…and there were no real stars either, but in my mind, as I smoked, ambled along, and chatted with Corey, I saw stars (but no hermaphrodites) and imagined a super-advanced, though ugly, starship making its way at sublight speed to some target just beyond visual range. I ignored the presence of apartment buildings and trees along the half-deserted street. The trees, as I imagined, were clumps of dark matter: light absorbing nebular clouds and swarms of space junk of dubious pedigree. No adventures unfolded in my head, but I had an environment. That was enough. I snapped a picture and this is the result. As I sit in contemplation of this image now, I wonder at the “constellation” depicted here. Three nearby stars and one remote stellar body. Are there planets in this strange hypothetic space? Will re-named and re-contextualized Star Wars action figures find some adventure in…whatever reach of space this might inspire? Maybe. Maybe not. But at any rate, here is an image of Chicago at night in a summer now vanished. Here is a marker of something that goes through my mind on a regular basis. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and don’t be surprised if (when things settle down around here) that some odd tale concerning an interstellar culture comes oozing out of oblique visual references to streetlights at night, as seen while walking. Hopefully you’re all having a great week, and I hope to get back into the swing of things soon.