Thursday, February 15, 2007

5 subjects

Has it ever happened to you that in a flash of a second your ideas, values, priorities, and definition of meaning which, one second ago you valued so highly, are now exposed as utter silliness? One well placed sentence is all it takes to switch a world view completely.

I pledge allegiance
To the fact
That I will never live in suburbia.
And for the evil empire
For which it stands
One accursed barren waste land,
Indivisible
With long commutes for all.

Curious; in an unexpectedly interesting segment of class, we wrote down our three main priorities in life i.e. family self work. Then were told to write these three priorities in sequence of “most time I spend with” to “least time I spend with”. Oddly, when I compared the two lists, they were completely opposite of each other—the main priorities get the least time, and the least priorities get the most.

I enjoy astronomy class mostly because of the incredible understatements one can make about the universe. My professor does it all the time “so they discovered that the sun’s core is about 1 million Kelvin…ok? So if you get close enough to that, it’ll burn your marshmallow sticks and ruin your whole party for sure”.

I saw the stars tonight. I can’t remember the last time I saw them, or at least looked at them, but there they were; mocking human existence from their eternal perch. If stars had a consciousness I wonder what they who live for trillions of years would say to those whose lives rarely surpass 90 on a planet a 0.00001 the size of their own. No such deflation of the human ego can compare to that the heavens bestow in the minds of those who listen to the message of their voices.

4 comments:

luke said...

it's just like anything else.

roberry said...

roasting marshmallows in the heat of the solar core is my favorite thing to do on the weekend.

Pamela Joy said...

I miss the stars. But I am learning to have affection for snow as well...

Béthany said...

oh breant. i just got back from a cabin in the woods, where a group of us slept last night. the sky, the sky! New moon, so the dark spruce trees stretched their top-hats to cut black rips in to the fabric of the stars.NO running water or electricity, a cold brook flowing through snowy banks and an outhouse. a kerosene lamp and a wood stove. i think the thought crossed all of our minds "why do we have to go back to school again?"

i haven't seen stars like that since i was young and still believed you could wish on them and it would make a difference.