Tag: …wow.

I mean “wow.” Just … wow.

A Short Course in Flabbergastery

IN HIS EPIC, THREE-VOLUME Burnham’s Celestial Handbook, the astronomer Robert Burnham, Jr., proposes the following metric:

Let one astronomical unit (the mean Earth-Sun distance) equal one inch. On that same scale, one light-year, or 63,360 astronomical units, equals one mile; in our model, that puts Alpha Centauri, our closest stellar neighbor, just over four miles away.

See how big space is? But let’s go further.

Fig. 1.

In October 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope peered 13.1 billion light-years into one tiny slice of our all-surrounding nothingness (see Fig. 1). On Burnham’s scale, that’s 78,067,190,880,000,000,000,000 miles — or roughly the distance from Earth to just beyond the boundary of interstellar space.

And if your mind is still insufficiently blown, think on this: Except for a handful of relatively close six-rayed stars, the smudges of light you see in Fig. 1 are all galaxies.

GALAXIES. Each containing hundreds of billions of stars, a good many of which are just like our Sun.

Wow. Right?

Contemplating such vasty depths may challenge our sanity. But I also think such a meditation is good for the perspective.

Because in all that unending emptiness, there is only one of each of us: unique, ephemeral, irreplaceable. Enjoy yourself if and while you can — and don’t forget to floss.

Here’s What I Know …

… AND WHEN I SAY “KNOW,” I’m not talking about “faith,” “opinion,” or “reasoned analysis,” but an intimate, visceral, experiential knowing. (Torah has a word for it — דַעַת — “da’at,” which can also refer to intimacy of the sexual variety.) So here’s what I know, in the same wordless way I know that I’m sitting at a desk typing these words to you:

1. The Universe is sentient.

2. This sentience cannot be fully described in words, including these.

3. This sentience can be directly apprehended.

4. Given this sentience’s unitary nature — as well as that every atom everywhere emerged from the Big Bang — all divisions are illusory, solely arising from the all-encompassing immediacy of our own ego-experience.

And that’s all I know. (And of course, I could be wrong.)

Any questions?

Confessions of a Sidewalk Astronomer

THERE ARE TWO TELESCOPES IN my living room, a third in a backpack in my bedroom closet, and a pair of astronomical binoculars on the bookcase near the front door.

“Why so many?” you may ask.

Easy answer: I am … obsessed. Continue reading “Confessions of a Sidewalk Astronomer”

Why Am I Still Here?

BARRING ANY UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES, I will celebrate my 62nd birthday tomorrow.

Leading me to ask: “How did THAT happen?”

As a child of the 1970s and very early ’80s, my gentle nihilism is understandable. It was a period marked by grand-scale social upheaval and the very real threat of nuclear war. Thus, many of us, instead of making plans for the future (“what future?!” we chorused with youthful cynicism), opted to revel in an increasingly tentative present. That checkered and lazy lifestyle provided a certain spice, and “no point in tomorrow” slid me into various endeavors — some pointless, others rewarding, all instructive.

But that sort of thing can only take you so far, and having arrived largely intact (save a handful of scars and surgeries) at this particular 2024 moment is to me something of a major miracle.

Regrets? A few, mostly of the self-sabotaging variety.

Joys? Many. Many and multiform.

Plans for what’s left of my future? To become, and to continue to become, more. I like to think I’m getting the hang of it.

5 Thoughts: Lifechangers

0. YOU ARE ON A PATH. Suddenly, something knocks you onto another one. Here are five (of my many) “somethings.”

1. 2001: A space odyssey. At the tender age of six, my mind was blown, by what I could not yet say. But after that, I was crazy for outer space, science fiction, astronomy, and everything those entailed. I still am.

2. Cosmic Trigger. The prolific Robert Anton Wilson’s magickal semi-autobiography, filled with the shared wonders of inner space, made me hungry for some “reality-tunnel” explorations of my own. I was 14, but to this day, the expedition continues.

3. DEVO. At 16, July 1978 found me lost in the sleepy conformity of Northern California’s Diablo Valley. When the phonograph needle hit the vinyl of Q: Are We Not Men? a whole universe of Other Mutants opened up. They were out there somewhere, but at least I knew they existed. And that made this lonely boy a little less so.

4. The Neo-Pagan Society of Diablo Valley College. Found ‘em! March 23, 1981 — the day after my 19th birthday — I entered the company of some amiable and kindhearted misfits filled with the divine spirit of high weirdness, raucous hilarity, bold creativity, mild-mannered mischief, and a lust for life. Best inadvertent post-birthday present ever.

5. Her.

Me and Mr. Jones

OUR TALE BEGINS SOME YEARS ago at my then-girlfriend’s folks’ house, specifically at their “hutch” — a giant, glass-shelved cabinet filled with such sentimental knickknacks and keepsakes as a commemorative Shirley Temple mug, souvenir spoons, porcelain bells, and the “good china.”

One item in particular caught my eye; a four-and-a-half-inch angular statuette, injection-molded of some heavy material superficially resembling carved wood: a pedestal-mounted figure in black boots and cabbie cap, brown trousers, blue coat, red shirt. And its face — dear God, its face. Continue reading “Me and Mr. Jones”

“2001” in 2024

LET’S TAKE IT FROM THE top, shall we?

– Earth-orbiting weapons: check.
– Commercial spaceflight: check.
– “Shirtsleeve” space environments: check.
– Seatback videoscreens: check. (Legal pad-sized portable videoscreens: check.)
– Spaceflight stewardesses: not to my knowledge.
– Zero-G pens: check.
– Zero-G toilets: check.
– Space station: check. (Commercial space station, with hotel: in development.)
– Voiceprint identification: check.
– Inexpensive picturephones: check.
– Pasty space food: check. (Actually, we’re now well beyond the “pasty” stage, so double-check.)
– Lunar base: in development.
– Fashionable spacesuits: check.
– Crewed deep-space mission: in development.
– Voice-interactive, slightly sinister AI: check.
– Tint-adjustable glass: check.
– Solar-powered alien transmitter buried millions of years ago beneath the Moon’s most conspicuous crater: Dear God, I hope so.

5 Thoughts: Make. BELIEVE.

0. READ CAREFULLY — THERE WILL BE a test later on.

1. In the book of Exodus, Moses tells the Children of Israel that G?d wants to enter into a contract with them. With one voice, and without knowing the details, the people reply, “Na’aseh v’nishma” — literally, “We will do, and we will hear/understand!”

2. Many people may argue that the formulation is backwards. How can you do something unless you first hear and/or understand it? But the Torah is imparting a great truth: that one can understand certain things only by doing them. Continue reading “5 Thoughts: Make. BELIEVE.”

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