Antarctica: Dancing Among the Stars
In a dark room, faintly scattered with disco lights — by day our briefing circle or lecture space — one couple, dressed in white, bright among the blended crowd, glided across the floor like the magnificently sculpted ice at sea. They twirled and leaned in to meet one another before briefly moving apart, still holding tight. From afar, their single selves found just as much happiness as in the embrace to which they returned.
I looked away, ashamed of my curiousness about the two, and tried to shift my focus to the never-ending daylight adamantly forcing its rays beneath the ship’s lowered curtains. Yet the old couple, now dancing to a tune other than what the crew’s band had played, tugged at my curiosity again. They were like the floating sentimental stars I couldn’t see in the opaque Antarctic sky, brought there to dazzle us even when our hope was lost.
People often say that perfect love doesn’t exist, and what an outsider can’t see are the twists and turns, the suffering and recovery a couple endures to be awarded such bliss. The struggles I couldn’t see nor know were manifested by how they slipped along the ice and stumbled over rocks along the freezing shore, still holding tight.
Other expedition members impatiently wriggled their way past the sprightly couple who, despite their delay, belted hearty laughs, unbothered by the inconvenience they caused. It was as though they lived in a world within another; how magical that must be.
I sipped on my third glass of British ale, breaking my vow to remain sober and hydrated, before sharing a shot of bourbon with an amusing fellow expedition member. I desperately sought to drown out annoyances from earlier in the day (or whatever “earlier” meant, with sunrises at 2:30 AM and sunsets at 11:30 PM). I looked back at the couple, dropping my forced smile into a frown, slightly envying their impenetrable happiness. There, I admitted to myself that I had become unusually bitter.
The ship’s passing of a research center led to messages and emails flooding my phone. I panicked, reminded of the monotonous life awaiting my return. I was so distraught throughout the day; during an expedition later that afternoon, I nearly slid and hurt myself while mountain climbing and decided — what I soon realized was a decision that put myself and other climbers at risk — to return to the bottom to clear my mind.
I looked up, catching a glimpse of the couple, appearing more like miniature orange toy figures from their bright parkas. Closer to the peak, the wife cautiously turned around to look for her husband, who trailed behind several other moving blots of orange and signaled to her to keep going.
I began to cry as I watched the twilight partners clumsily reunite at the mountain peak because there I stood — having given up over trivial frustrations — unable to complete the climb. As I waited in misery, nature surrounded me: penguins yelping and other birds perching beside me. Yet all I could think of was the noise that stretched across continents and oceans to buzz in my brain. I was missing the moment, life right in front of me.
As everyone ended another day’s expedition with a celebration, I sat and watched the couple, who appeared happy to have safely returned from a steep, chilling climb and to the warmth of each other’s touch. I made plenty of wildlife discoveries on that trip, but the one I made about the human condition is that it’s possible to break one’s own heart. And so I left the endlessly dancing duo to retreat to my small cabin.
I snatched the complimentary chocolate the staff placed on my pillow before struggling with one hand to drag the chair from my desk as the other stuffed my face. I was preparing to write a journal entry but became distracted by the large book beneath the glass desktop displaying a map of Antarctica. I pulled it out and hovered over it, sprinkling a mouthful of chocolate crumbs over the thick, glossy paper and dusting them off before turning the page.
Spread across two pages were planetary systems and galaxies. I smirked, admiring the majestic Virgo Cluster expanded on the bottom right page. In childhood moments of fear and sadness, I convinced myself that was the galaxy whence I was created and thrashed upon earth, born a human Virgo. But now I felt less grand and supernatural. I felt more like a fading star.
Loneliness surged through me, and I urgently focused on the page. The shiny cluster surfaced memories of my brightly colored paperbacks of Rumi’s poems, and a particular quote (I came across again when I returned home) was revealed: “Don’t feel lonely; the entire universe is inside you.”
As darkness finally emerged, I conspired in my dimmed cabin a new way forward, a soulful way of being once I returned home and lived through another lonely holiday season. Afraid of the leap I planned to take to live more intentionally and full of love, I accepted that even then, there would still be moments like this. But it was time I lived as expansively as the universe inside me; it was time I danced among the stars.
