TYPE: V

Artemis Cephei

Bronx NYC

I remember the first time I got to see it. The first time I felt it. How big everything truly is, how small we are, and the potential we truly possess. Growing up in the Bronx, I couldn't see the stars. Broken sidewalks, project buildings, cars, folks posted up, orange streetlamps. Those streetlamps, car lights, store lights, city lights - they create a luminescent dome. You can see everything in front of you, but nothing above you. You can't see the sky. You can't see the stars. In the city - the world seems so small, because you think what you know, is all there is. And you might believe it, because it all feels so big, and ever present. But there was a moment that changed everything for me. A 4 mile hike, with classmates of mine, to the peak of a mountain in Moab. The sun had completely set. The orange gave way to a deep violet - that then faded to a cold soaking black. And slowly that black illuminated. Backlit by the stars, and then the entirety of our galaxy and everything that had ever been. Comets, shooting stars, nebulae everything that had ever been. And we were just a small part of it. Our streets, our lights, our skin, our minds, our mountains, our structures, countries, oceans - were a part of this entirety. We aren't just in the universe, we are the universe. Great and powerful, significant, and small, and meaningless, and all the meaning there ever could be. I left feeling like i need to remember that moment as long as i could, as often as I could. Type: V is just the latest iteration of me trying to keep it in my heart. And pass any of that along.