Stars When the Sun Shines

By Wayne Stier

From Zen cherry blossoms to the Noh stage. From Hawaiian breathing lessons to an Okinawan rodeo. From Balinese wise men to the Egyptian pyramids. It all started in small town Minnesota and it ended much later than the doctors said it would. In his early 20s, Wayne Stier was diagnosed with cancer and a less than 50% chance of living more than 5 years. He and his wife Mars responded by seizing the day and moving to Japan.

This extraordinary memoir is full of memorable lines and lessons. Some funny. Rule of slapstickstand up quick and pretend it didn't happen. Some koanlike: A dog's bark is a dot pointing out the silence. Stier's writing will change the way you look at the world. His writing is an act of discovery and rediscovery, from the landlocked plains of the midwest to the slope of an active volcano. In Japan, Wayne became a Kyogen actor and the second foreigner ever to perform on the Noh stage. On the Big Island of Hawaii he built his home and art studio, with living trees forming the corner posts, and wrote the myth of his own life.

In Bali, an old man told Wayne to look at the skyfilled with shining stars even when the sun is shining. Stars when the Sun Shines is about looking at the world through continuously new eyes. It's bound to change the way the reader looks at the world as well. Stier's writing burns through illusions to conclusions about a life so full he forgot he was dying, until he did, in Hawaii, on May 30, 2009, weeks after his 62nd birthday.

For readers who gravitate to Eat, Pray, Love because of its spiritual odyssey or The Last Lecture because of its message to live in the moment in spite of impending finality, they will have an interest in Stars When the Sun Shines because it offers a combination of both.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1578634733
• ISBN13: 9781578634736
• Release Date: April 2010
• Publisher: Weiser Books
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.81 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Wayne at his best

It always expands one's world to step inside someone else's life, especially when their life was as expansive as Wayne's. Even those of us who knew him find in these pages significant stories we'd not heard before. He's authored numerous other books that reflect the places where he lived or traveled, but this one relates his inner journey, and it represents his writing at its best.

Something Completely Different

I think I shall never forget this book. From Wayne's earliest memory to his final aha moment, every page vibrates with relevance. If you are looking for life-changing revelations that are brand new, then you'll want to read "Stars" because you've definitely never met anyone like Wayne. Reading "Stars" was absorbing enough to be worth my time in the overall scheme of life. Be warned though, he doesn't gloss over any of the hard lessons which means that after "Stars" your life will be forever altered. Laugh, cry, exclaim, but you will never be the same!

Metaphor for vision beyond the bright Sun

All the previous books and plays written and performed by Wayne were rehearsals for Stars When the Sun Shines. This book title is a pointer for you. Look behind the surface reality to get your ah ha, wider vision is there for you all along. Wayne used his elasticity of mind to bring readers into unlikely places. These places were inhabited by people who magically/intuitively accepted him. Wayne seemed comfortable walking in the shoes of an orang asli, Japanese actor, Balinese shadow puppet master, Hawaiian navigator, Okinawan picture bride or Chinese tycoon. Wayne could absorb their world views and then write those perspectives for us to see via his translation to English vernacular. In all, the book provides some great armchair travel and puzzle play on the meaning of life. For a window on the Big Island of Hawaii Wayne compiled poetry and short stories in his book Hawaii Blue in 1987 which is now available in a Kindle version. Hawaii Blue

It surprised me

I hadn't expected to be as impressed by this book as I was. Wayne Stier was an itinerant author (of little success), slapstick street theater actor, sculptor, health food store operator and amateur of all trades. He had been given a 5 year maximum remaining life after a cancer diagnosis, so took off with his wife Mars to Japan where he was able to teach English in a soul deadening school. He abruptly quit after being invited to perform in a Japanese western rodeo, was given Noh theater training (very unusual for a gaijin to be allowed to study), spent time traveling through Asia and Indonesia hoping to write a travel book but unwilling to use the publisher's format and generally bumming around for far longer than his doctors would have expected. He starts with a metaphoric story from the Round Table where Sir Gawain had been given a year before he was to die by beheading. In that time he did everything with a new consciousness, where everything was a metaphor for life now that death was a certainty. And when his life was spared on the chopping block, he became one of the wisest members of King Arthur's court. I loved his ways of describing the way his dyslexic mind works: the next time you watch the sun set you can feel the world moving a thousand miles per hour and you are going backward. If you shine only green light on a plant it will wither because it reflects green having no use for that color- the plant is every color except green. The sky is every color but blue. If you look at the stars on a clear moonless night, where the stars aren't there must be a cloud. He also throws in his personal aphorisms: if you are hitchhiking, the car will only come when you want to be where you already are. Take that car, always. Silence is the space between the barks of a dog. So while the book meanders and wanders, just like Wayne Stier, it is an enjoyable meander, with memorable insights and enough lightness to remember it easily.