not so clever starlight

Here’s one of the things about long-standing chronic pain: it makes me feel a lot less smart than I used to be.

Absorbing information takes longer, with more exposures and iterations required. When I’m reading dense material, I have to go over the same paragraph — sometimes even the same sentence or phrase — over and over again, to make sure I’ve understood.

Sometimes, I can’t read at all, not even light fiction, because nothing sticks. I have the same problem with popular science videos, even on topics I’m deeply interested in, like the James Webb Space Telescope, robotic missions to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and the Artemis program.

What’s worse is that I can see this impact on my writing as well. I struggle (more than I think I should) to translate my thoughts to the digital page. I used to be a quick thinker, making informed and creative connections on the fly. Now there are gaps between my points of reasoning, and whole arguments and important shades of nuance simply go missing.

Brain fog is a common experience, often exacerbated by whatever new drug the neurologist has prescribed as a preventative or rescue treatment for my daily headaches. So far, nothing’s really worked. We’ve been at this for a while now, trying to find something that will alleviate the tension headaches, migraines, ice-picks, ocular migraines, vestibular migraines, etc., that I’ve been experiencing in various combinations since November 2014. I don’t know if the cognitive impact is permanent, but every time I get a particularly bad migraine, I worry that it’s doing damage to my brain. I worry about what I might be capable or incapable of in the years to come the longer this goes on.

But astronomy is a science I can take at my own pace. The stars are patient. They wait while I set up my telescope, and they don’t demand that I observe them with perfect precision. I tire easily, and I miss a lot of what’s going on over my head, but it’s okay. On nights when I’m too worn down to even step outside, the cosmos doesn’t hold it against me.

Sometimes I study instead, especially on cloudy nights — or, that’s my plan, anyway. It’s not unusual for me to check a book out from the library many times, keeping it for as long as the renewals last and then requesting it again. I can read that page in the astronomy textbook or astronomer’s memoir as many times as it takes for the information to take hold.

Or when I’m feeling less capable, I can rewatch Artemis II footage, or just go to bed. I can try again tomorrow. The constellations will have shifted as they progress across the sky with the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. But it’s slow movement, unhurried, undemanding. I greet familiar friends rising in the east as the seasons change. I try to learn something new each day, if I can. Often, I cannot, or I realize I’m relearning something I’d forgotten.

Related pursuits may simply go unrealized. My little smart telescope produces decent images for its size and sensors, images that could be spectacular with some competent post-processing, but I’ve not had the energy or mental bandwidth to develop this new skill — and that might never happen. In the meantime, my inexpert and very amateur astro images still delight me.

More than a science, though, astronomy is a source of wonder. The night sky is a refuge, and a relief. I look up for inspiration and comfort in equal measure. Astronomy is a well that never runs dry, no matter how deep my thirst or how long it’s been since my last draft.

It’s both humbling and frustrating to be less clever than I commonly expect of myself. But whatever my capacity in the moment, the stars are there to meet me.

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Images:
1. The Pelican Nebula (IC 5070) in Cygnus. Imaged from Portland, Oregon, on October 6, 2025, by Jennifer Willis.
2. Messier 52 (NGC 7654 or the Scorpion Cluster) in Cassiopeia. Imaged from Portland, Oregon, on October 14, 2025, by Jennifer Willis.