The Cosmic Cafe is Closed

When the universe withholds, and why it's not always a bad thing

Aug 07, 2024

The Cosmic Cafe is closed, I discovered, at 4:11pm yesterday. While there was no sign, Google had said it was open until 5pm, along with some but not all of the activities at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Altadena.

This cheekily named cafe is nothing more than a concessions stand with to-die-for views, and gross-but-delicious chili dogs that my dad would have loved, smack in the middle of the Angeles National Forest.

Order the meaty chili dog at your own risk.

To get there, I traveled the winding 45 minutes down the Highway 2 yesterday blasting classical music and feeling like David Hockney in this post-cubist video he made that I saw last year in London.

I made the trek because I was desperate for a change of scenery and, let’s be real, to escape my hot apartment which was being zoomed around by my two adorable, but just as a stir-crazy, kittens. We all needed out, and while they could narcoleptically fall asleep in any position, I could not.

I fantasized about a productive writing session in the shade of the little hut where the Cosmic Cafe was located. I would sip my tea while staring out at the city below, smoggy in the distance. I might even do a bit of hiking if it wasn’t too hot, I decided, but truth be told the chili dog was a priority.

My stomach grumbled as I pulled into a shady parking spot in the mostly empty lot. You can imagine my disappointment to see the concession stand window closed. A mild panic set in. By now I was quite hungry and tired from the drive, and I had nothing but some melted Hershey’s Kisses from two years ago that would even begin to count as a food. As far as I knew this was the only food for 45 minutes in any direction. My car thermometer said 102 degrees.

Instead of freaking out, I calmed myself by drinking water and deciding I would take a look at the open exhibits. The main attraction that was still open was a gallery of photos taken by the two biggest telescopes in the world for many years.

Grainy black-and-white photos of nebulae in Sagittarius and spiral galaxies near the belt of Orion were paired next to casual photos of a Einstein in somebody’s living room, next to one of the Founders shooting a cue ball on a pool table.

The photos of the galaxies were staggering, although we have all seen them before by this point. One photo explained that the four-inch cloud of dust you see had enough material in it to create 10,000 Suns. I liked that they differentiated our star by its proper name, Sun, and the rest of the identified had more clinical names made up of a combinations of numbers and letters. It’s like on Star Trek when they visited Earth every once in a while and you irrationally feel the coziness of the familiar being in our solar system.

That said, it seems impossible to imagine that anything could be big enough to encompass 10,000 Suns when our Sun is perhaps the biggest thing we are able to conceptualize as humans. It is so big and all consuming that in the past, people thought it was all there was to the entire universe - just our Sun, the planets, and the stars that surrounded them that dangled in the heavens like embellishments, sequins on a great galactic gown.

At the end of the circle of photos were the newer images of clouds like the Horsehead Nebulae that are so big there are multiple galaxies worth of matter contained within a form. The wall text offered that the distance between each star pictured is billions of light years, another number that is impossible for my mind to understand.

All that is to say, my problems - past, present, and future - were thrust into perspective by the vastness of the universe in a literal way. I thought about the Cosmic Cafe as a metaphor for a divine source that we pray to hoping for things to work out, just the way we want them to work out, when we want them to work out. How inconvenient when they don’t, right?

The Cosmic Cafe has been closed for me a lot in my life. For so many years I struggled in the straight dating scene in San Francisco. Why not me? and Why is this still not for me?, I wondered as I saw friends partner up and have families. This concern for my future happiness and finding a mate felt all-consuming and yet every time I thought I might have a lead, the Cosmic Cafe would shut down.

It is only since coming out as queer, and lately throwing some gender-questioning in the mix, that I feel like the logic of the universe is starting to make sense. What good would it have been to get what I wanted if it wasn’t actually what I wanted? How could I order the right thing if I wasn’t aligned in myself? Maybe instead of a chili dog, what I really want is some french fries? (I would happily take both.)

Not to spend two Substack posts on the genius of the 1993 film Jurassic Park, but one of the concepts offered by Jeff Goldblum’s fabulous character is the butterfly effect. The premise being that every small decision is impactful, even one as seemingly insignificant as a butterfly flapping its wings. The smallest moves, poco a poco, can change the course of human history, but you have to be aligned. If not, it has been my experience, the universe will correct you, over and over again so you don’t flap (or flop) too far in the wrong direction.

For that I say thank you to the geniuses behind the Cosmic Cafe for all the things that didn’t work out in my own life.

My recent metamorphosis, akin to that of The Hungry Caterpillar (including the weight gain), has inspired new art, conversations with people going through similar journeys, as well as interviews on my podcast that I hope will reach more people needing a mirror to their own experiences. Thank you for the nos, and closed doors, and stony silences. Thank you for the confusion, and since I have no way to change it, all the messiness. If things had worked out any easier, I would have been stuck in a food coma, missing out on the real mysteries and adventures that I know are waiting for me.

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