Monday, May 16, 2011

Wait! What? Oh, that's okay then.

So I got up the other morning at 4:30am and trundled outside in me undies to stare up at the sky. And there I saw Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter, all bunched together as if they were commenting on what I sight I was.

Even had a number of shooting stars joining me in this pre-dawn steak (the eta Aquarid meteor shower). For a space geek like it, it was quite something.

A time like this gives you an interesting perspective on the world; most sensible folk are still curled up asleep, blankets and doonas tucked in tight and pulled up under chins to ward off the cold, the streets are silent, the world pretty much yours and yours alone--other than the billions of stars above (oh, geek coolness number two: the Photopic Sky Survey - a 5,000 megapixel photograph of the entire night sky stitched together from 37,440 exposures! Just awesome).

Under such massiveness, all the little things seems petty. It's almost like a cleansing of the soul; left alone with yourself and your thoughts--and those untold stars and their planets and who knows what life that flitters and twitches on them--it really is quite liberating. You just shuck off all the arguments and problems and worries, and enjoy the moment for what it is and what it only ever is--a moment in time. And when you're given such a stunning backdrop in which to live that moment, why on Earth--or anywhere else--would you want to fill it with turmoil and bitterness?

Well shit, that was deep. BBBUUUURRRRPPPPPP.

On another note, I've just ordered The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction - 792 pages (it's bigger than Macabre!) covering 150 years' worth of the best science fiction stories. It has 52 stories. That should keep me entertained for a while.

The countdown to the UK and Germany is on--15 days til this wee lil' fella goes and gets lost somewhere in the land of beer steins and pork. Oh woe is me.... It's going to be, well, just terrible.

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