Colliding Suns

Credit: NASA/GSFC/SDO

“Grass. Ruby ridges, blood-colored highlands, wine-shaded glades. Sapphire seas of grass with dark islands of grass bearing great plumy green trees which are grass again…Orange highlands burning against the sunsets. Apricot ranges glowing in the dawns…And there, somewhere…” … she smiled, gently closed the book and examined the well-worn cover, thinking that it would hold for one more reading.

Although it was quite archaic, nothing could replace the feel of real paper and that unique smell that only old, used books held. Marcus would laugh at that silly sign of human weakness, exclaiming: “We are scientists! Act like one, for God’s…” No, he probably wouldn’t mention God, she chuckled to herself.

Stone and water, people called them behind their backs, hard and cold, enduring and persistent, forever marked by their parent’s fame and demise. But, they were only survivors, desperately clinging to each other, as a drowning man clings to a driftwood in the middle of the river, not knowing where it will take him, not having enough strength to swim for shore. The question was, between the two of them, who was drowning and who was just drifting?

Just a fragment of the story that lives in the corners of my mind for quite some time now. Set in the near future, it’s about brother and sister, alien ambassadors to Earth. They are shape-shifters living in a human form for several centuries, feeling more human than alien. Desperately in love with Earth and its inhabitants, they are struggling to stand by while Earthlings and their own species head on for inevitable and tragic collision.

Sigh…I really need to sit down and start writing.

Greater Prospects

“It is paradoxical, yet true, to say, that the more we know, the more ignorant we become in the absolute sense, for it is only through enlightenment that we become conscious of our limitations. Precisely one of the most gratifying results of intellectual evolution is the continuous opening up of new and greater prospects.”

                                                                                                                         – Nikola Tesla

We are all Connected

“Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us.”

– Neil deGrasse Tyson

Magnificent Opportunity

Carl Sagan

I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.
The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.

“In the Valley of the Shadow”, Parade, 10 March 1996