August, 2015
Dear Glow Inc,
When I first moved to Colorado Springs, over twenty years ago, someone I met said, “Have you seen the castle?”
I was a bit surprised since I had not, and had never heard of any particular castle in the city. However, after inquiring, I found out that there in fact is a castle, and tours are open to the public. The person who alerted me, also told me that it had been built by General Palmer, in 1871, who is commonly credited as the founder of Colorado Springs. This was all new to me and I made a mental note to try to visit the castle when I had the chance. I was grateful that this person had taken the time to share this information. However, he went on to tell me a few more details about the castle, which were particularly curious, but I never confirmed as to their veracity. Anyway, he said that General Palmer built the castle as a way to woo his wife to move to Colorado. Evidently, she either was from England or very much enjoyed England and so Palmer decided a castle was a great way to make her feel agreeable to Colorado. My friend said the castle tempted her to come, but after a short time (like a year or two) she moved back to England to the regret of Palmer. Evidently, there were also some health problems and the altitude did not help. She never returned to Colorado and died at the age of 44 in England. This notion all sounded fascinating to me, and the castle even more curious.
So, then fast forward to 2010, when I met Joy as I was traveling in India. I was smitten by her and after a while decided I would propose to her. However, I was not sure if she would be interested in ever moving to the United States since she had spent all her life in India. I knew I was only in India temporarily, so I started thinking of ways I could interest her. I have to be honest…I did think of General Palmer and lamented that I did not have the resources to build a castle. In fact, I had very little that seemed of interest. Nonetheless, I thought and thought and finally came up with an idea. So here is what happened…
First of all, I proposed to her while in India and she agreed. However, soon thereafter I had to return to Colorado. She stayed in India and we decided we would set a wedding date in the next couple of months.
Then I emailed her to find out the time, date and location of her birth. She was a bit skeptical, but I convinced her to tell me without letting her know why. Then I went online to find the latitude and longitude coordinates of the location of her birth. Then I found another website where you can generate star maps of the night sky. On that site, I entered the date, time and the latitude and longitude of her birth location to find out what the stars would have looked like if I had been standing at that very place at that specific time. The website generated the star map and I saved the image to my computer. Then I printed that image where the stars were black on a white background, but instead of printing on paper, I printed on a clear plastic sheet. Then I borrowed an old overhead projector from a friend who is a teacher. I then projected the image onto my ceiling. Wow, it worked.
Now I all needed was some cool glow paint. So, I found your site and purchased the white glow paint.
Once the paint arrived, I put the projector in one corner and turned it on. I stood on the ladder and carefully painted all the stars I could reach. Because the ceiling was lower than I had hoped, in order to get all the stars to show on the ceiling, I had to put the projector in each corner. So, I painted as much as I could from one corner, and then moved it to the next. I painted each night after work and it took me about a week, mostly because it is hard for me to paint very well on a ceiling.
In the end, I don’t know how many stars there are, but I estimate somewhere between 2,500-3,500. It is an amazing mural. I decided not to tell Joy, but to wait until we married and she (hopefully) arrived in my bedroom. I assumed she would appreciate my efforts. In the meantime, I would stare each night in stupefied amazement since the ceiling looks so fascinating. I would get excited at the idea of her seeing this for the first time and I hoped that it would help her be more comfortable with life in Colorado Springs.
After about two months, the unthinkable happened. As we talked on the phone, she started to distance herself from me and soon thereafter called off the engagement. She said she did not want to move to the US and did not want to marry. At that point, I was devastated, and I decided I had to tell her about the stars. Even when I explained what I had done, she did not change her mind.
I was crushed.
But as the weeks of my mourning turned into months, I started to regain my breath and I began to see that even pain can weave complimentarily into the fabric of life.
And, now, five years later, I stare each night at those beautiful stars that I have come to love. Sometimes I think of General Palmer and sometimes I think of Joy. But most often I am just thankful that Glow Inc exists.
ceiling fan is the central shadow. green dot is the fire alarm.
©2015, Alignment Life
Alignment Life 
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