Redeye to New York from San Francisco. Somewhere over the midwest, I pull the window shade down and stare at the constellations. A bright clear night, slight patch of clouds. Below, pockets of scattered lights.

The moon is just out of sight, ahead of the plane. I press my face into the glass, nose bending sideways, and squint until I can see it. It is a half moon. From this angle, it looks like the moon with a face, like you see in children’s books. He smiles at me.

“Beautiful, huh?”

I nod, then look out past the wing and up to the stars.

“It is,” I breathe out loudly. “It is.”

We stay that way for a while. The man on the moon, stars, earth, the hum of the jet engines, me. My mind wanders, thoughts upon thoughts. Things I wish weren’t so. Things I wish I could change.

I feel the moon watching me. I look at him again. He’s smiling. An ever knowing smile.

“It’s still beautiful,” he says.

I watch my thoughts disappear into wisps. Only the stars remain.

“Yeah,” I say silently in my head. “Yeah.”

I press my face harder into the glass until I can see him better. He glows bright, lighting up the sky.

“It’s not my light,” he says. “I’m just open to it. So I receive it. The brightness you see from me, it’s because of that.”

So I don’t need to create light, I think. It already exists. I just have to open to it. The rest happens naturally.

I can feel him smile.

“Like a Lotus,” he says. “Receive the light, you will bloom.”

A Lotus blooming. I love that image.

“Go to sleep,” he says gently. “You’ve learned enough for one night.”

I nod, whisper a thank you, pull up the shade, and lie back in my seat. The jet engines lull me to sleep.