God's Refrigerator

For the last couple years, my English professors have conspired to use the term "constellate" at every possible instance. Essentially, the idea is that if you take a group of things that don't necessarily have anything to do with each other and stick 'em together, like a group of stars from different systems, a connection develops. Orion is a snake, not because of anything to do with those suns except that the way we see them from this planet makes them look like you could draw an up-and-down line between them, kind of resembling a snake at some rough level. I was never impressed with how constellations were supposed to mirror actual things from this world. If there's anything to constellations, then the sky is like a giant refrigerator door that showcases all of God's rough connect-the-dot illustrations from Kindergarten. So while we can place three ideas next to each other in different and interesting ways and call it constellation, maybe we should remember that those connections are largely artificial. It's like eating leftover stew--the ingredients were never, ever made to go together, but because you put them together, you strain to find ways that the concoction tastes good.