Happy to have a new personal essay up in the summer issue of Juxtaprose, a literary magazine that juxtaposes both emerging and established writers as well as local and global ones. It seemed a good fit as Transience itself contrasts the terrestrial with the celestial, the profound with the quotidian, the intimate with the vastly distant: “…Hundreds of us had gathered for the Perseid meteor showers, drawn to a source phenomenon that may have sparked our species’ penchant for fireworks, rock concerts, and other grand spectacles. Throughout the ages cultures gave names to these star sacrifices, imbued them with intention, granted them power. Shooting stars were transmuted into the slings of slighted gods, dragons of fortune and calamity, the tears of martyred saints. Even in modern times, when we know that they comprise mere rock and debris, many of us continue to attach meaning to these mineral rains. Some of us still seek miracles by appealing to forces we do not understand and cannot master. I still, on occasion, have the need to wish upon …