Tag Archives: stars

Hungry to be Ptolemy

Posted on by Standard 26
Copyright: Tartu Observatory Virtual Museum

Copyright: Tartu Observatory Virtual Museum

I stand in my driveway for a few minutes each morning looking out at the night sky. On my iPad is an app, Star Walk that I can put up to the sky and it will identify each constellation. I have loved staring at the stars but have never really known what the various night forms are, and so have taken to trying to find them. I marvel at their names, Ophiuchus, Serpens Caput, Centaurus, Bootes, Corona Borealis, and Hercules. So much magic and myth in each name. The map above is of the sky as I saw it this morning: Scorpius, Lupus, Sagittarius, and Corona Australis. “Look who watched over my home this night”, I think to myself.

zenandpi.com

zenandpi.com

This is how our ancestors saw the night sky. A cast of characters galloping across the firmament each night. Each one part of a larger story, part of a mystical journey each of us could partake, if we chose. Or we could look upon the third brightest star in the Northern hemisphere, Arcturus glimmering in the night sky and know from that brilliant light erupts Bootes, the Plowman, first cataloged by Ptolemy in the 2nd Century. There isn’t just stars floating up there, but histories and stories and ancient mariners or philosophers charting unknown lands.

Richard D. Serros: www.serrosstudios.com

Richard D. Serros: http://www.serrosstudios.com

With all our technological advances and our hunger to know as much as we can, I often think we’ve lost a little of the mystery and wonder at the world and skies around us. We’ve forgotten to tell stories about the curious things we find in plain sight. We’ve lost touch a bit with the magic that looking upon a night sky to see peacocks and lovely, floating maidens can elicit.
corona-australis_overview_edited

We focus so keenly on the day ahead, we forget all around us is beauty and mystery that could alter our entire day if we would pause only briefly to look up and know a king’s crown or a great hero of old hangs gracefully there.
corona_(crown)_overview_edited

sagittarius-constellation

Our lives are not ground to salt by our labors. We lose the luster and vibrancy in living when we won’t take our eyes off our labors to see the marvels that exist effortlessly around us. Life dulls under the weight of brooding instead of delight in something extraordinary as a single crocus pushing up through snow or the wonder that comes from gazing upon Betelgeuse in Orion’s belt. When we release the need to stare at our troubles and turn our gaze upon the beauty that simply awaits our notice life becomes so much easier to bear, so much easier to awaken to each day, so much more fun to really live.
stock-photo-6062738

Night Walk

Posted on by Standard 8
Free Bing Photos

Free Bing Photos

We think splitting an atom is the most powerful thing we humans can figure out or do. I’d argue breaking a habit is. Without focus and discipline changing habitual patterns isn’t just difficult it’s nearly impossible, because the very nature of a habit is you don’t have to think about it, you just do it. This is great for driving to work in the morning, but if you have a habit of eating too much or never giving yourself nice things, it’s a problem not a help. Of interest, however, is inside our well-worn habits is the power of celestial black holes. When we break out of them it’s a bit like releasing the energy of a quasar. This, of late, has become my focus. I’ve challenged myself to break a few of my own.

Tonight I went for winter’s walk. I often step out onto the deck and think I should walk the neighborhood before bed. The air is crisp and clean and it always feels like there’s magic in all that darkness. Invariably though, I talk myself out of it with such pressing matters as there’s lunch to pack for the next day. I’m in cozy socks. It’s late and I have to be up early. I decided tonight I would make a different choice. On death beds all over the world are millions of people lamenting the night walks they never took and the sunsets they forgot to appreciate. That shall not be me, I decided. I left on my cozy socks and slipped on my sneakers.

The air was, as I expected, crisp and almost electric. Christmas lights dot almost every house and as I walked along the lake the colored lights lit the water. I heard the geese commenting on my passing, more than I could actually see them. At this hour, there is so much quiet that the subtlest rustle of leaves could be heard. I held my keys, as even their jingle in my pocket seemed a marching band. What I think may have been an owl flew over my head as I stood on the bridge that crossed the creek. The coyotes in the field beyond the houses announced the start of their night hunt and I listened to them yelp for several minutes before moving down the path into the wood.

To experience the night, it’s movement and its odd manner of light; stars, a crescent moon, street light reflections, is to awaken something truly mystical in your soul. I am certain it was this mystery that so often whispered to me as I stood on the deck. A mystery in me I can only feel when I walk in darkness and allow the sounds of the night to move around me. There’s power in allowing yourself to be partially blind. To accept the way isn’t all that clear past the next few steps. That you can be happy in all the black uncertainty. It’s curious that when we meditate it can feel hard to silence oneself, yet take a walk along a deserted lane at night and it is as if your skull has become the most beautiful chapel, your thoughts saffron wrapped monks bowing to the moon.

Took Back

Posted on by Standard Reply
Re-post from Art For Ever Facebook page

Re-post from Art For Ever Facebook page

I took back the night
First, by comfort and warmth
Wrapping tightly in fat blankets
That sorrow could not reach

I took back the night
Warm cocoa in big mugs to sooth
A dark wretchedness in my soul
Warm tears in dark hours – spent

I took back the night
Opening wide window sashes
So moonlight, fireflies and little moths
Might dance in my mourner’s room

I took back the night
With hard letters burned in fires
To dead loves gone
But for their shadows in my head

I took back the night
Hope, a thought, a light brick
Layered in a house of joy, half finished
A frame waiting for laughter

Inspired by Michael Robbin’s poem, “Be Myself” in the April 2013 edition of POETRY

Voyager

Posted on by Standard 5
Free Bing Stock images

Free Bing Stock images

The apartment is quiet. I breath in slowly, holding it a moment before letting it out. I breath in again and close my eyes.

What separates me from the great explorers? Are we not all voyagers? Am I any different in substance and character then the captains of old? Crusty souls, masters on open seas, with nothing but gulls to mock their misadventures and palms to hail their gold. They hungered deep within their hearts for other treasures, too. Love, beauty, freedom

I breath in and the sound of my heart beats in the distance.

I stand, eyes closed and breath in again. The clock ticks in the kitchen. I hear the rattle of the blinds as the wind slips in. This time comes the scent of the sea. I wait, breathing silently, until the ocean spray touches my face. It heightens my awareness of the flapping sails. I stand ever so still. Breath in, breath out. Tack lines move across my feet as they feed out. This helm holds the trails of so many hours in my pacing.

The wood of the wheel has a warmth to it beneath my palm. Worn, warped, mine. I stroke it fondly for it is my companion, as much as, the means to find my way. Tidal currents move at angles on the water ahead, but I hold the wheel steady. The ocean moves beneath me and I’m terrified by what I cannot know or see and exhilarated with equal passion.

The sextant, too, feels substantial and weighty in my hand. I bring it up to my eye and hold it steady on my future. It is distant, but objects within are clearer to me now. I can set my mark. Breath in. I am not as far off course as I thought. Breath out. A few calculations in my sea journal and I move the wheel slightly to starboard. The spray rises and the wind fills the sails. That distinct flapping comes to my ear, as a switch of an ignition somewhere in my mind. I hold my breath and listen. The rhythm of the hull rising on the sea surf, then dipping below the horizon with a soft flop.

My heart beats in the distance.

The salt and the sea now envelope me. I run my hand lovingly across my map. A map built in sweat and love, tears and anger, missteps, wrong turns, high flying freefalls and laughter. Yes, a rich laughter, indeed. My map. My life is lines of longitude and latitude and strange sea monsters with lolling tongues. Or are they guardian angels? I’ve forgotten or can’t remember. I have been adrift many times. Always, at some point, I catch a wind and find land to regroup and set out again.

Breath in. Breath out.

The sound passing my lips is the only sign the ship is in motion. I look up. Orion is on the horizon. I am a star gazer and my ship has many ports still to see. Master of my destiny, I am. I breath deeply one last time of the saline sweet air. I lay the sextant down, loneliness settling where it filled my hand. The clock ticking in the kitchen persists. Blinds rattle in the dirty apartment windows. My heart beats steadily in the distance. The map folds close as eyes open.

Breath in, breath out.