It seemed repetitive maybe, I am not entirely sure, but what I did, what I felt, every single emotion that washed over me with each stride, with each movement, was different, distinguishable, unique, irreplaceable, a hallmark in my journey through time and space as I flied, as I stood atop my horse, as it strolled around in a circle, as the earth circled around the sun and the sun around the Milky Way and the Milky Way around the universe. Each gesture lighted up, shone brightly for an instant, and then faded away to become a piece of the trail I was leaving behind as I traveled the cosmos. 

I had never given much thought to what I did outside of where I did it. My whole life had been inside the circus. Confined to striped colors, flapping tents, discarded tickets, tamed beasts and roaring crowds of similar interests. I had woken up to lion roars and I had slept with monkey howls, and although I had realized that the life I led didn’t fit the norm, it had become routine for me to comb out straws from my hair and to rub away bear droppings from my soles. It had become routine, predictable, scheduled almost.

Until I saw Van Gogh’s Starry Night. I had never paid particular attention to art. I liked literature, I liked biographies and atlases, I liked analyzing constellations and old maps, and I liked reading the journals of ancient travelers and early sea voyagers. But I had never realized that we had enough magic on our hands to create masterpieces like The Olive Trees or Daubigny's Garden. 

I was fifteen, we were visiting Amsterdam, and I had an entire afternoon to myself. I was getting ready to lie on my bed with my favorite astronomy magazine when I heard that we had settled a walking distance away from a famous art museum. I don’t know what exactly made me tuck the magazine under my pillow and forced me to get up and leave to find the said art museum, but that’s what I did. When I finally stepped inside, eyeing the first exhibit, half an hour later, I seemed to regain control of my senses. I felt as if something had pulled me into the Van Gogh Museum and although the mysterious force was disappearing, it was leaving a ghost attraction towards one of the paintings. The Starry Night. 

I walked towards that painting and watched it, absorbing each hue, each curve, each dimension, and each shade. I lost myself inside the stars, inside the gleaming crescent of the moon, in the flowing winds of the night. When I came to, I turned around and walked all the way back to the circus. I flopped down on my bed, the nebula posters on my ceiling merging together in countless swirls of colors. I felt as if I was drugged, as if someone had taken my life, stretched it around a canvas, and was doodling around with an enchanted paintbrush. I closed my eyes and as the images slowly calmed against my eyelids, I understood what my life had meant. I saw the path I was carving out in the celestial sphere.

“Horses are the nomads of the Chinese Zodiac, roaming from one place or project to the next.” It all fit perfectly. 

Perhaps, I don’t look it, and perhaps it seems repetitive, but what I do is what I am. Each second, I transform, I change, I grow, I leave one more footprint behind. Every action ignites a signature. Every action brands my presence, my existence, my being. I leave behind a long track of lights. A unique one-way route for each soul, untraceable, only recalled in memories. No chance to go back to the beginning, no chance to go back even a second. We move until the universe can expand no more and has to coil back again. Back into the infinitesimal mass it rooted from. But until then, I am moving forward, carving an intricate design and leaving a legacy. A road made of stars. 

•••

I can feel the eyes of the guy who looked at me with a strange sort of curiosity as I entered. I dismiss his gaze and focus on my road, I lose myself, each second counts, I treasure as many light particles as I can and as I finish my last circle, I see that the guy looks displeased. Maybe he didn’t have his Starry Night moment yet. But he will. He surely will.