My long dormant yoga mat came in handy dark and early this morning on the frosty grass. No, I wasn't doing downward dog in the dark. Not that ambitious. The purple foam rectangle made a perfect Leonid meteor shower viewing station.
My penchant for wishing notwithstanding--I also like birthday candles, spilled salt, and fountains--I love meteor showers, and in a quest to inhabit my soul, as opposed to my tenacious head and body, abandoning flannel and down for quiet sparkling dark seemed the perfect way to start a day.
To lie in the still chill and contemplate the incomprehensible space and matter in all directions felt both expansive and grounding. As I live in a giant field on top of an esker, my horizon is big and I could almost feel the earth's crust under me bulging into the sky. An owl hooted in the in the same time signature as the meteors flying across the sky, keeping a sweet ostinato.
The struggle to keep my stubborn intellect out of my quest continues. At every turn I want to know more about physics, as if that would give me useful language, images, and, of course, control. Honestly, I'm so attached to being, or at least appearing, smart, it makes me stupid. Since I only know about physics what Omni Magazine taught me in the 1970s and 80s, plus a ton of reading on string theory and dimensions I did for a dance project in college, I'm pretty sure I have barely the vaguest notion of the science.
Regardless, I am grateful to have seen the meteors this morning as they left their trails across the sky. Twice I thought I could hear the hiss of their fiery demise.
2 comments:
Lovely post. Do you subscribe to the daily astronomy e-mail from NASA? http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091117.html
It's amazing. Also, I too am a smarty-pants, or maybe just a smart-ass, depending on who you talk to, and I too want to learn more about science, physic etc. A great book, if you haven't read it is: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. I downloaded it from Audible, which I also highly recommend.
I'm just full of recommendations this morning. It must be the nice weather.
I was just reading "Born With a Bang: The Universe Tells its Story" to the twins and having a really hard time wrapping my brain around particles and anti-particles...and M very kindly said, "did all that happen when you were a kid?" Smart-a**.
Post a Comment