Scientists talk about dark matter, the invisible, mysterious substance that occupies the space between stars. Dark matter makes up 99.99 percent of the universe, and they don't know what it is. Well I do. It's apathy. That's the truth of it; pile together everything we know and care about in the universe and it will still be nothing more than a tiny speck in the middle of a vast black ocean of Who Gives a Fuck.
I stared up in disbelief at the information my eyes fed my brain, and lost myself to the stars.For the first time in my life I had a greater idea of how infinitesimally small our planet really is and, furthermore, how tiny and insignificant I am in the grand scheme of the vast universe.I took a seat on a rock next to Lily and took in the moment to comprehend the vastness of everything else, and the incredible smallness of I.
Thereafter were the stars persuaded to depict compasses and quadrants, stripped of their names, given numbers, all but regimented into a grid, before they had had enough and reverted to their old subjects: dogs, dragons, herdsmen, bears. Take heed, worldly fashion—someone may trust you up to a point, but if you push him too far you will lose all the power you ever had over him and he will blaze up and turn into a bear.
I..." He struggled to answer. "When everything was quiet, I went up to the corridor and the curtain in the livingroom was open just a crack... I could see outside. I watched, only for a few seconds." He had not seen the outside world for twenty-two months.There was no anger or reproach.It was Papa who spoke.How did it look?"Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment. "There were stars," he said. "They burned by eyes.
In these countless stars, in their clusters and colors and constellations, in the “shooting” showers of blazing dust and ice, we have always found beauty. And in this beauty, the overwhelming size of the universe has seemed less ominous, earth’s own beauty more incredible. If indeed the numbers and distances of the night sky are so large that they become nearly meaningless, then let us find the meaning under our feet.
There is none other like me. There is none other like her. We are unbelievable, impossible. I fly as high as the Heavens which cast me out. I have run out my comet's course: she is the world, I have sought out. Round her I have cast the loop of my orbit, and am held fast and safe; she is my Sea of Tranquility, my Milky Way, bearded with Berenice's Hair. I am a new constellation, pegged out in the sky. I am joy. Complete. For ever.
All night the earth and the heavens followed their usual arrangements. Stars passed: an immense tide hung over them. A silent sea raced back with the sun, its wave turn-over small, delicate and comfortless. The most glorious of all stars hung above the sun's threshold and went out. An hour later the sun governed the earth again, mist-chasing, flower-opening, bird-rousing, ghost-driving, spirit-shepherding back out the various gates of sleep.
When I lie back and close my eyes, this farthest lip of beach right next to the end of the ocean feels like being up close to an enormous breathing being, the bass drum surf thump reverberating through the sand. Living out here with no lights, alone, you would indeed become sensitive to seasons, rhythms, weather, sounds- right up next to the sea, right up under the sky, like lying close to a lover’s skin to hear blood and breath and heartbeat.
There are landscapes in which we feel above us not sky but space. Something larger, deeper than sky is sensed, is seen, although in such settings the sky itself is invariably immense. There is a place between the cerebrum and the stars where sky stops and space commences, and should we find ourselves on a particular prairie or mountaintop at a particular hour, our relationship with sky thins and loosens while our connection to space becomes solid as bone.
I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend...I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend...
My days I devote to reading and experiments in chemistry, and I spend many of the clear nights in the study of astronomy. There is, though I do not know how there is or why there is, a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope.
With my naked eye, on nights the moon climbs slowly, sometimes so dusted with rust and rose, brown, and gold tones that it nearly drips earth colors and seems intimately braided with Earth, it feels close, part of this world, a friend. But through the telescope, the moon seems- ironically- farther away…the gray-white moon in a sea of black, its surface in crisp relief, brighter than ever before. I am struck too, by the scene’s absolute silence.
When we die, our bodies turn to dust,” he says. “If you were nobody of consequence, you're forgotten unless you do something worth remembering.” When he looks my way, I purse my lips and look down. “Otherwise, you're just another place marker in the ground. These buildings will rot here, their bodies are above the ground taunting us with what we did wrong as a people. Reminding us of the evil we're capable of. They are constant.
Up then, fair phoenix bride, frustrate the sun;Thyself from thine affectionTakest warmth enough, and from thine eyeAll lesser birds will take their jollity.Up, up, fair bride, and callThy stars from out their several boxes, takeThy rubies, pearls, and diamonds forth, and makeThyself a constellation of them all;And by their blazing signifyThat a great princess falls, but doth not die.Be thou a new star, that to us portendsEnds of much wonder; and be thou those ends.
I put back my head, looking up at the deep black sky swimming with hot stars. If you knew they were really balls of flaming gas, you could imagine them as Van Gogh saw them, without difficulty . . . and looking into that illuminated void, you understood why people have always looked up into the sky when talking to God. You need to feel the immensity of something very much bigger than yourself, and there it is - immeasurably vast, and always near at hand. Covering you.
