I’m lying on Main Beach, phone held aloft over my head, tapping out this message against a backdrop of stars. The wind is blowing and the damp sand below gently draws the warmth from my back with the parasitic subtlety of a leech, only in this case I am the smaller party in the relationship.
As I lie here, gazing up into the semi-blackness of a somewhat light-polluted night sky, it occurs to me that the photons being focused by the perfect organic lenses in my eyes left their stars many years ago. These tiny, subatomic waves (or particles if you’re that way inclined) battled their way across the vastness of space before striking my retina and creating tiny electrical impulses that my brain will process and interpret as a beautiful field of tiny white specks.
Lying on my beach I have no way to tell whether those stars are still alive or whether the light I am witnessing is simply a passing memory of a star long since gone supernova.
These inner workings of the universe are pedestrian on the surface and common in everyday life, but to me they’re special.
1 comment
Laura O'Connell says:
January 28, 2012 at 1:00 am (UTC -4)
Great post, Dan. I wonder about the light from stars, too, where has it come from and what has that light focussed on in it’s travels across the universe. Pretty mind boggling when I think about it.