The Southern Cross

is for the stargazers on the southern part of the globe what the Big Dipper is for their colleagues north of the equator: the most famous constellation.
It is, however, more difficult to identify, it reveals the characteristic pole of the celestial hemisphere only to the curious, insisting observer. In that sense it is a typical constellation: "a group of celestial bodies (usually stars) that, to an individual observer, appear to form a pattern in the sky or appear visibly related to each other". (thanks, wiki...)
Keywords here are, obviously, ".., to an individual observer, appear to form...or appear visibly related..."

Thanks to this definition, I eventually understood, why I occasionally use this term "constellation" when trying to explain how something unexpected like sudden insight came to pass. It's nothing more than me, individually, seeing a particular combination of factors and their relation in the cause or outcome of an action, an event.

As, for example, the one about four months ago, when Carlos told me one morning that he'd like to have a video shot to advertise his Book-Cafe in the local movie theater. Didn't I own a camera? Perhaps I would want to shoot the piece?

Ah, the Southern Cross! Carlos as the pointing star Alpha Centauri, Truji, Curri and Brian as the stars of the Cross itself, all "constellated" in a way to point towards my Sony and me.

It took its time until we had identified this pattern in the nebulae of sparkling ideas, in the cluster of a thousand possibilities. Two evenings of wild brainstorming created the plot and a script, four weeks produced a raw tape, two more weeks and we had a first version of "Cinco Sentidos - the video".
All in all the "Making of..." took two months.



Now, we're waiting for the theater-admininstration to put it in action, here, in San Martin.

You, out there, can watch it here....