Star Journal: Face to Face with Space
Hours supine before the Perseids, I was moved to re-ConSider my Here-and-Now in a new light
I think back and find memories from last August, living, at home, finally, under a vast stretch of sky for the first time ever, really. And I realize that I was not tuned into the cosmic calendar, distracted as I was, still moving into a new place and emptying boxes from our move here in June.
The Perseids of 2020 came and went in the dark above our somber, contagion-riddled world before I realized those stars had been falling overhead and I had not paid attention. If a meteor falls in the forest…?
I was determined not to repeat the failure-to-show-up from last year, so I set calendar alarms for August 11, 12, and 13 for 2021. And I would be ready! I wheeled an old wooden chaise lounge out into the near pasture in front of the house. Cloudy or clear, I’d at least show up and wait it out.
I started in mid-July, with the back of the star-gazing furniture set to a 45 degree slant. I used it a half dozen times before peak-Perseids, and saw the occasional random meteor. But more than that, I became familiar again with the constellations that we see here to the south-southwest, the direction I was facing in the chaise lounge. I relearned some old things and saw some new features with the binoculars, and had some nice moments of solitude and reflection. But…
It was not until I laid the chaise lounge out perfectly FLAT this week that my mind literally changed. And this is the take-home from this little bit of *️⃣ con-sideration:
Lying flat with the heavens above me, a paradigm shift happened—but only after I mustered the patience, and persisted sufficiently long in this receptive state, and let my mind defocus from what I have always conceived of as normal human-in-space geometry. You may think you could cross your eyes and refocus to make this happen, but this more a vision of the mind than of the eyes.
At that transitional instant in earth-time and in that altered state when the change occurred, from that moment on, I no longer thought or from now on will think that I am looking UP at the constellations. I will no longer see those imagined figures of bears or goddesses as existing “overhead.”
Should you reach this point yourself, you will grok, after having spent just so many hours horizontal to Earth while at a right angle facing OUT into the cosmos, that the stars are OUT THERE and not UP THERE. Those vast and distant points of light are the visible matter of the cosmos, as far as you can turn your head from north to sound, east to west, peering into the blackness.
The stars, planets, nebulae, globular clusters and galaxies are spread out all around you. The Earth itself against your back blocks much of the full view you would see if suspended in the vacuum of space. Imagine what that would be like! But you’re seeing a pretty good chunk of the cosmos!
Before you, each twinkle is a reality of physics and chemistry plus time, immense in size compared to the quantum that is you; as unimaginably old and persistent as you are instantly nothing.
And so the fact that I saw 28 meteors Friday morning is not the main story here for me. But neither is it something I’m likely to forget.
I watched, unblinking, as so many odd grains of comet dust frizzled in the light of friction, zipping from the vacuum of space, into an atmosphere that perpetually protects those of us here on the skin of Earth from being barbecued on our nocturnal chaise lounges below; shielding us by just the right thickness of gas that both saves us from annihilation from above and is now cooking us in the exhaust of our own greed and stupidity below, one degree at a time.
*️⃣ con-sideration: poetically and in my mind “talking together in light of the stars”.
Middle English consideren, from Old French, from Latin cōnsīderāre, to observe attentively, contemplate (probably originally meaning "to observe the stars attentively (for the purpose of divination or marine navigation)") : com-, intensive pref.; see com- + sīdus, sīder-, star.]
Star Journal: Face to Face with Space
What a lovely post. The city lights are always too bright here in Los Angeles County. I can only see the brightest stars and planets.