So over the last year, I've become quite good at playing nursery rhymes on my guitar-it's one of the easist ways to be able to actually play guitar while concomitantly appeasing the attentions of my two-year old daughter.  On my favorites (because it's easy) is the old-standby, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. 

Well, this last Saturday night, I did not sleep a wink.  Therefore, all Sunday was somewhat of a daze.  However, somewhere in the midst of it, I was playing this song and was struck by the question posed throughout:  "How I wonder what you are."  Indeed, I thought, how we do wonder what stars are. 

Of course, science tells us that they are giant balls of coalesced stellar gases.  Pa-shaw.  Here's my philosophical analysis.

Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are

Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky

Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are

Are you really just a ball of gas, as the hegenomy of science says?

Why should I believe that, when no one's ever seen it, and no one's ever touched it

I know I've never tasted it; I've never had a side of star with turkey on rye

Maybe it's an animal; maybe just a great machine

It's harder to tell what's real, and separate the make-believe

Maybe it's a giant sheet the ancients spread across the sky

And the moderns came in with their sticks, and only poked holes in it…

That kind of makes sense to me, because I have some holes of my own

And you say, you say, you say I'm a star; or at least I'm made of it

So when I pierced full through, with Western epistemology

Maybe I can be one of your stars; reducible to bare phenomenology

And you say, you say, you say I'm a star; you say, you say, you say I'm a star…