Explaining my blog title

It occurs to me suddenly: Ever wonder why I call this blog "The Bolide?"

Okay, I know I have absolutely zero readers out there, so this is pretty much a parody of a rhetorical question. For what it's worth, though: I have an answer.

The place I live is pretty far from any major urban centers. I wouldn't exactly describe it as "rural," but it is fairly isolated. At any rate, one of the things I immediately noticed when I first moved here was the amazing number of shooting stars I saw.

Most people in America today have rarely, if ever, seen a shooting star. That's due to the large amount of "light pollution" in major urban areas that effectively blots out the light of everything other than the brightest stars.

So upon moving to this new, rural area with very little light pollution, I was immediately struck by how common shooting stars actually are. I rarely go more than a few weeks without seeing one.

Now, you know the old Disney tune, "When You Wish Upon A Star?" Well, okay, sue me: Although I never reveal it to the world, I'm secretly a hopeless, utterly hopeless romantic. Seriously, in my most secret heart of hearts, I sincerely believe in all that "true love" shit (more on that subject later). And every time I see a shooting star nowadays, I make sure to send up a wish. It is invariably the same wish, and it hasn't come true yet, not even close — but if it were something basically realistic, that would be denying the whole point of the exercise, would it not?

Anyway. One night I was out walking my dog, and the sky was lit up by this HUGE flash. At first I thought it might be lightning. It was so bright that it cast distinct shadows.

I turned just in time to see the longest, brightest shooting star I have ever seen in my life. If I hadn't known better, I might have thought it was a firework — but it wasn't. Trust me on this. It was too big, too bright, and too fast.

Needless to say, I made the biggest, boldest craziest wish of my life once I grasped what had happened. Will it come true? Who knows? It hasn't yet, I can tell you that.

I went back to my house and looked up information online about meteors. I discovered that there's a technical term for an extremely bright shooting star: It's called a bolide. Normally, the term "bolide" is only used to describe meteors that hit the earth, but the sources I consulted agreed that any extremely bright shooting star is, technically speaking, a bolide.

So that's where the title of this blog comes from. It's how I see myself, basically. I like to think that I am a breathtaking, dazzling display of heavenly light; I pin all my wishes and hopes for the future on that thought. At the same time, I recognize that the odds are very strong that I will just burn up in the atmosphere — a quick, easily forgotten little shot across the infinite night sky, never illuminating to others, never discovered, just glimpsed for one brief, sweet moment, and then forgotten, never to ruffle the stiff, scratchy, heavy cloak of others' memories ever again.

I guess what my blog title says is: I am a big, bright shining star. I am powerful, and I light the very heavens. Yet I believe nothing will come of it, just as nobody cares for the thousands of individual arrows that sailed through the air at the Battle of Hastings. The single arrow that is remembered is the one that struck King Harold II through the eye; all others are simply forgotten, decayed into dust.

I am an arrow, strong, tough, and true; yet I will putter away my final days as naught more than a speck of sand, to be swept off by the remorseless tides of time.

This blog is me, the me that shines, the me that will be remembered, if any of it is remembered at all. It is the bright, breathtaking shooting star: Whether I am felled by death or dissipation, I am, or I was, the dazzling face of heaven — even if just for a moment. I am the Bolide.