Passing fancies and structures.

(Borrowed from The Anti Room.)

There's a pleasure in etymology beyond that of the purely trivial, of knowledge for its own sake, of tracing of one word of one language to an older word in a different language. Before the abstract (which language is) there existed the material, the innumerable objects and phenomena of the physical world -- or more concisely, nature. No matter how long, circuitous, or obscure the path, every noun, verb, and adjective leads back to nature, and sometimes studying language brings to our attention the exquisiteness of natural patterns, the germs of which are inextricable from our words.

I recall an evening some time ago -- whenever it was, it was during the winter, and I was in Jersey. Snow had fallen during the day; in the evening the clouds blew over, but the trees were still laden with snow, frozen to the branches.

I went for a walk that night on one of the trails through the woods. There's one path I've always frequented more than any of the others (probably because it's so close to my mother's house), and there's a certain tree that always caught my attention. It's unusual because it's a spruce -- the only evergreen in sight, towered over on all sides by the older ash and maple trees. It's the odd man out, and I've always felt a fondness (even a sort of kinship) for this tree.

It might have been last year, probably around Christmas. I had come from Pennsylvania to visit the folks, and I had gone out to walk the old path and pay my respects to the evergreen odd man.

It must have been Christmas because it was between midnight and 1:00 -- this I do remember -- and Orion was overhead.

It was exceedingly frigid, even for late December: the sky was a limpid black and the stars shone cold and crisp. (Cold nights are best for stargazing in the northeastern United States: the lower the temperature of the air, the less obfuscatory moisture and dust it can hold.) I remember standing beside the spruce and looking up through a gap in the bare canopy.

The loveliness of the winter sky is distinguished by an intimation of geometrical structure. It's dense and richly patterned, almost arabesque. The straight lines of Orion's belt and scabbard; the conjoined pairs in Auriga, Gemini, and Canis Minor; the "V" shape of Taurus, and the prongs of Canis Major -- and all of these are as points and branching outgrowths of a hexagon, a wheel with Betelgeuse at the fulcrum.

As I gazed at the stars through a trellis of spruce branches (and bear in mind that the geometry of evergreen growth, all straight, divergent lines, is suggestive of fractal patterns) there was a gust of wind, scattering ice crystals overhead. The stars were so bright and the snow so reflective that wisp of ice momentarily sparkled -- and during this moment of superpositioning between the snow, stars, and spruce branches, the words occurred to me.

"Stellar dendrite."

From The Online Etymology Dictionary:

stellar (adj.) 1650s, "pertaining to stars, star-like," from Latin stellaris "pertaining to a star, starry," from stella (see star (n.)).

dendrite (n.) mid-18c., from Greek dendrites "of or pertaining to a tree," from dendron "tree" (see dendro-).

Stellar dendrite, then: "of stars, that of a tree."

This is, of course, is the term used to describe a structure seen in ice crystals and snowflakes.

(Taken from On Flat Lake Time.)

It was a small and passing thing, but ineffable and astonishing. If I had the conviction or faith, I might have said a prayer. I don't think I said anything. I'm certain I didn't.

I would like to say that I marveled, like Whitman, in perfect, knowing silence, knowing that silence is the language of the ineffable. But I didn't say anything because I didn't have the words to speak of what had touched me.

All language stems from nature, but sadly tends to lack the precision and felicity of its estranged parent.

Space, Outer and Inner (Part II)

I think I'll be taking a short break from blogging so I can turn my undivided (or rather less divided) attention towards a couple of heavier items on my agenda. (I need to edit a short novel and prep it for pimping. A novella requires editing and fact checking. Etc. Etc.) In a perfect world I would have enough time to simultaneously work on short and long-term projects, but this is no perfect world.

In the meantime, I will be updating the comics page every week for a month or two, so don't expect me to disappear. I'll slap the strips up here and they will double as blog posts, because I'm allowed to do that.

Now. About a year and a half ago I threw together a post about why astronomy is a useful and beautiful thing, but never concluded it and so left it dangling as a "Part I." Since I dislike leaving projects unfinished, and since I've been going out to hunt for Messier objects lately (the Crab Nebula and Triangulum Galaxy still elude my lens), now seems as good a time as any to tie up this year-old loose end.

I'm looking at the original half-baked post again and thinking I remember where I wanted to go with it -- but well, we'll see. A thought dropped sixteen months ago probably won't be quite the same when it's picked back up.

Anyway: today we begin with the grand Western intellectual tradition of arguing with shit Plato said. From the Republic:

And now, Socrates, as you rebuked the vulgar manner in which I praised astronomy before, my praise shall be given in your own spirit. For every one, as I think, must see that astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.

Every one but myself, I said; to every one else this may be clear, but not to me.

And what then would you say?

I should rather say that those who elevate astronomy into philosophy appear to me to make us look downwards and not upwards.

What do you mean? he asked.

You, I replied, have in your mind a truly sublime conception of our knowledge of the things above. And I dare say that if a person were to throw his head back and study the fretted ceiling, you would still think that his mind was the percipient, and not his eyes. And you are very likely right, and I may be a simpleton: but, in my opinion, that knowledge only which is of being and of the unseen can make the soul look upwards, and whether a man gapes at the heavens or blinks on the ground, seeking to learn some particular of sense, I would deny that he can learn, for nothing of that sort is matter of science; his soul is looking downwards, not upwards, whether his way to knowledge is by water or by land, whether he floats, or only lies on his back.

I acknowledge, he said, the justice of your rebuke. Still, I should like to ascertain how astronomy can be learned in any manner more conducive to that knowledge of which we are speaking?

I will tell you, I said: The starry heaven which we behold is wrought upon a visible ground, and therefore, although the fairest and most perfect of visible things, must necessarily be deemed inferior far to the true motions of absolute swiftness and absolute slowness, which are relative to each other, and carry with them that which is contained in them, in the true number and in every true figure. Now, these are to be apprehended by reason and intelligence, but not by sight.

True, he replied.

The spangled heavens should be used as a pattern and with a view to that higher knowledge; their beauty is like the beauty of figures or pictures excellently wrought by the hand of Daedalus, or some other great artist, which we may chance to behold; any geometrician who saw them would appreciate the exquisiteness of their workmanship, but he would never dream of thinking that in them he could find the true equal or the true double, or the truth of any other proportion.

No, he replied, such an idea would be ridiculous.

And will not a true astronomer have the same feeling when he looks at the movements of the stars? Will he not think that heaven and the things in heaven are framed by the Creator of them in the most perfect manner? But he will never imagine that the proportions of night and day, or of both to the month, or of the month to the year, or of the stars to these and to one another, and any other things that are material and visible can also be eternal and subject to no deviation -- that would be absurd; and it is equally absurd to take so much pains in investigating their exact truth.

I quite agree, though I never thought of this before.

Then, I said, in astronomy, as in geometry, we should employ problems, and let the heavens alone if we would approach the subject in the right way and so make the natural gift of reason to be of any real use.

It's neat to imagine that the most renowned minds of antiquity disdained empiricism. Just thinking about something was more than good enough for them, and infinitely preferable to dirtying their hands with the contents of this filthy reality. This would be why Aristotle (and thus Western science, for many centuries) believed that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones. Until Galileo, we don't know of anyone ever bothering to test it.

The material fact supersedes the thought. And as the physical reality we experience terraforms our intellectual landscape, the extent to which we accurately understand that reality informs the veracity of our idealizations.

Plato underestimates the extent to which the study of the stars can expand human knowledge -- which, of course, is the classical aim of philosophy. After all, astronomy is the egg from which modern science hatched; and in only the last few centuries, the scientific method has yielded such a wealth of hidden facts of our world as to necessitate a thorough reevaluation of two or three millennia’s worth of philosophy. (Do you think Plato would be galled by the irony of being upended by the results of pursuit he deemed “absurd” and unfit for the philosopher?)

As the history of astronomy over the last five hundred years is a veritable trophy rack for science, it also attests to a physical universe that consistently defies our presumptions about it.

For instance:

“The stars and sun revolve around the Earth, which is the center of the universe.” Nope!

“The Earth and other planets move around the sun in circular paths.” Nope!

“The universe is about as big as all the stars we can see.” Nope!

“Light travels through space instantaneously.” Nope!

“The values of time and space are absolute.” Nope!

“The universe is essentially static.” Nope!

“Gravity should put the brakes on cosmic expansion.” Nope!

Homo sapiens (and perhaps a few very closely-related ancestors) are, as far as we can guess, the first and only animals on this planet capable of conducting such enquiries into the machinery of reality. We’ve only gotten decent at deciphering the universe’s blueprints in the last 500 years or so (out of the nearly 200,000-year history of our species), and there is yet unimaginably much beyond our grasp. But we’re moving right along.

It’s rather drolly funny that some of Homo sapiens' mightiest intellectual achievements led directly to the realization of Homo sapiens' cosmic insignificance.

From the very beginning of our species's foray into the domain of “intelligent” life, we’ve just been figuring our shit out as we went along. Everything had to be invented on the fly -- it’s not as though Homo sapiens ever had any prior examples it could follow.

Throughout most of its history, humanity's conception of its place in the cosmos was far from accurate. Our perceptive senses evolved as a means to keep us alive (in a terrestrial environment) long enough to pass on our genes, not to peer into the outer and innermost vistas of reality and speculate on its causes. Jury-rigging the capacity to do the latter with our faculties for the former was just a wonderful accident. (Whether or not such an adaptation is advantageous for the long-term survival of the species remains to be seen.)

The various conceptions of the universe painted by our ancestors vary with time and place, but the overall pictures are fairly similar. The Earth was the fulcrum of the universe, made and kept by gods and spirits with strikingly human characteristics, who interacted and communicated with human beings. Though humanity was unquestionably subordinate to higher powers, the gods representing these forces of nature could be petitioned, placated, and reasoned with by human beings.

Now we know that this is not the case. The universe is vaster and stranger than we can understand, and our stature in it has shrunk considerably in the last few centuries. The "new" cosmos is no longer something on which we can easily impose human characteristics, and we have little to no reason to believe that it has any interest or investment in our continued existence. And it certainly does not communicate with us; every solid fact about its existence about which we can be remotely sure had to be wrestled from it.

(Consider how many of our traditions, institutions, beliefs, prejudices, etc., were born of actions taken, decisions made on the fly based on incomplete information, repeated and repeated long after their initial usefulness had passed, their original intent and context forgotten. “There’s orthodoxy!”)

(Of course, one maddening truism of humanity's lot is that the facts are never all in.)

Today we know the stars in the night sky aren’t just green-screened somewhere behind our existence; our existence is a haphazard collateral product of their existence, and there exist more stars than human beings.

This is the context of all human affairs, and we cannot claim to understand anything when we neglect to put it in its proper context.

The pursuit of astronomy -- and I mean doing more than just looking at Astronomy Picture of the Day; I mean looking at the stars out of habit, keeping track of the movements of the planets and phases of the moon, investing in some optics, learning about the methods and milestones, even crunching some of the numbers for yourself -- will bring the practitioner down to Earth, so to speak.

In fact, a foray into amateur astronomy can often make one feel intolerably small. People looking at the night sky for a while often remark how tiny it makes them feel; going outside with a telescope on every other clear night puts one face to face with this aspect of their situation on a regular basis, making it that much harder to ignore.

This is a useful thing.

Another useful (but somewhat more extreme) exercise would be to look at yourself in the mirror each morning and remind yourself that you’re very close to nothing. Nothing I do matters. Everything I feel and know and possess will be lost. Everything I make and say will be forgotten.

(Recall as well that everyone else in the world is as equally tiny and clueless and lost, and they’re only a quiet, starry night away from being reminded of it.)

Routinely call to mind as well that the Earth formed 4.54 billion years before you came into existence, and will go on existing without you until the dying sun gobbles it up (five billion years from now?),  destroying every last trace of Homo sapiens' existence except for a few burnt-out space probes coasting through eternity.

(Granted, we’re discounting the possibility that humanity gets its shit together and survives long enough to master interstellar travel, but I think we can safely assume the odds are not in its favor. I eagerly invite humanity to please prove me wrong.)

But none of this is new information. You’re certainly aware that this is the truth of our existence, but probably don’t think about it very much. We rather go to lengths to avoid dwelling on it.

I believe that what a person decides to do, when honestly confronting the fact that his life is infinitesimal and all his work in vain (because all human endeavor will finally amount to nothing in time), determines the grade of his character. The existentialists might call it the truest choice he can make.

Even as it humbles us, the knowledge of our place in the cosmos must also encourage. Most of us probably aren't in the habit of conceiving of miracles as infinitesimal occurrences -- but, well, here we are: small creatures of strange and splendid circumstance.

We are marvelous beings with incredible capabilities. Look at us: we’re monkeys that have gone to the moon; apes that figured out how split the atom. We’ve sent flying robots beyond Pluto. We’ve figured out what life is made of and how it works. We’ve peered at photons and galactic clusters. We created the blue-flavored snocone and Beatles records.

Of all the other 187 planets and moons in our neighborhood, none of them have produced anything remotely like us. Of the 851 extrasolar planets we've counted in our galaxy (so far), we guess that only 0.5% are habitable. Peculiarly, astronomy has revealed at once how insignificant and how precious we are.

People preoccupied with the stars are popularly regarded as asocial, but it it is hard not to feel a concerned interest, if not compassion, for one's fellow creatures when his avocations routinely put their situation's tenuity in such sharp focus.

Although it’s miraculous that we’ve been able to come so far and achieve so much, we have nothing assuring us that we’ll go much farther or learn much more. The cosmos has no reason to wish to take care of us.

We must take care of ourselves.

Any world we would choose to build for ourselves that would be worthy of us -- of the best parts of us and our potential -- must be constructed with a mind to our position in the broad scheme of things, and all of its ramifications.

rusty chain word write

Still alive. Pushed myself a bit hard last week. Got sick. Took a few days off and didn’t write anything, didn’t think about anything, didn’t do anything productive. Didn’t have any thoughts worth blogging about. Still don’t.

Picking up a pen (or sitting at a keyboard) again after a quiescent period is like riding a bike -- a bike whose chain has rusted and fused since you threw it under that tarp out back. It’ll be a few days until I’m ready to roll again.

So what comes next?

One problem with my new digs is that I don’t get wireless in my room. I can’t get online unless I pick myself up, unplug the laptop, and take it downstairs. The drawbacks are obvious: I can’t fall asleep listening to white noise or rain, watch MST3K, or hang out with the Socks crew on turntable.fm. But the inconvenience (like most) has been a blessing in disguise. When I have to deliberately relocate myself and my computer in order to get online, I’m much, much less likely to compulsively check my email and Twitter or spend forty minutes looking at silly things on YouTube just because I can. I’m reading more books. I’m interacting with the local human population more often. I don't hear about the election or pop music anymore, and so I rarely have to think about either.

Simultaneously: I don’t have a personal computer in the library where I spend most of my time. (My bosses transplanted me from my old office into the library office without realizing there’s no Ethernet jack. Whoops!) I can use the public computers, but these are often in use and there are always people coming and going, looking over my shoulder. As a result, I’m taking fewer (and shorter) Internet breaks. When I don’t have much to do (or am feeling lazy or groggy in the morning), I procrastinate by flipping through books instead. Not that I never had fun reloading Twitter on company time, but this is somehow more satisfying.

For most human beings, spending less time soldered to a screen would probably be an unblemished boon. I’m not surfing the web, I’m living my life. I am not a gadget. My Facebook profile is not my identity. I’M A HUMAN BEING, GOD DAMN IT. MY LIFE HAS VALUE. Etc., etc., etc….

For a wannabe writer who understands that uncirculating, inaccessible information is information that does not exist, this change in my habits inspires some concern.

I should be registering accounts on popular message boards, ingratiating myself to the local population so my comic/blog plug will be well-received. I should be adding more books to my Goodreads page. I should join Reddit and actively haunt /writing. I should post chapters of The Zeroes on Wattpad. I should be following and shooting @s to well-established writers on Twitter. I should be sucking up to more literature bloggers.

Promoting your work is just as time-consuming and tiring as producing work.

And I’m still much more interested in writing than networking. This is why my novels will never appear in bookstores. (also, they offend people who review books.) Fuck.

But what am I writing next, I wonder?

In the past couple of months I’ve written a novella and a short story. I probably have another couple of short stories in me. What I should really do is revise and finalize the short novel I finished last April so I can begin the process of trading personalized pitches to literary agents in exchange for impersonal rejection slips. And what I really, really need to do is finish one of the two unfinished novels I have sitting around, but just thinking about it makes me dizzy and weak.

Orwell once said:

All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

But it’s gonna have to happen.

Today I smoked one cigarette -- the last one in the pack.

Cigarettes don’t fill the void. Cigarettes create the void. is what I’m telling myself. Let’s see how many days it is before I go out and buy more.

Borrowing a really nice Meade telescope from a co-worker on the condition that I give his daughters an exhibition at some point. Probably going to wait another couple of months so I can show them the Orion Nebula at a reasonable hour. But it resolves the moon's surface very nicely, and magnifies Jupiter enough to render the cloud bands (although just barely). When it gets colder and clearer (as I’m hoping it will), I’m hankering to try hunting down the Crab Nebula and the Triangulum Galaxy -- two Messier objects that have consistently eluded my binoculars.

Rusty chain. Bear with me, please.

Words found written on the back of a library slip at the bottom of a wastebasket

We cannot afford not to be astounded.

More Busy, More Bullets

• As the weather grows sunnier, so becomes my general mood. Seems some of my anxious subterranean sludge started creeping up to the surface last week. OH GOD WHAT HAPPENS AFTER AUGUST WHERE WILL I WORK WHERE WILL I LIVE and OH GOD HOW DO I GET PEOPLE TO GIVE A SHIT ABOUT MY BOOK remain persistent questions and stress sources, but I think I'm coping with them somewhat more gracefully than last week.

• Speaking of the book: Mistah K of Hardcore Gaming 101 (and architect of the Castlevania Dungeon), your favorite DIY archive of video game oddities and forgotten classics, recently posted an exceptionally thorough review of The Zeroes on Amazon. I'm pointing it out primarily because I wish I'd gotten him to write the damn product description. I could never figure out how to describe it without going on and on and on and bogging it in details or otherwise not saying enough. (As you can see I erred toward the latter.) In my defense, when your mindset during the whole process of writing the book is BE AS MUNDANE AS POSSIBLE, it becomes very hard to compose enticing dust jacket copy. (It's a book about nothing! You'll love it!)

• The Zeroes also appeared on NotRock Records' blog a couple weeks ago. Full disclosure: NotRock Records is headed by filmmaker, drummer, and Jedi master John Fisher, whose name appears on the book's dedication page. (Fortunately, John is a lot better off and a much better fellow than most of the people who appear in the book.) You'll also read that his one of the bands in which he's been involved (Insouciant) is on an indefinite hiatus, which is bullshit. (Sorry, John.)

• The spring star Arcturus is setting; the summer star Vega is rising. I'm pretty sure we've looked at the Summer/Northern Triangle in an earlier post, but why not glance at it once more?

• Speaking of: the summer solstice is only a few days away! From here on out we're only bound for winter. To help stave off the preemptive seasonal depression, Comics Over Easy will begin a series of regular updates the day after the solstice. (I hope.)

• Have you ever watched a primrose blossom at sunset? I'd have said me neither two days ago, but...

7:40 p.m.

8:53 p.m.

8:55 p.m.

8:56 p.m.

9:01 p.m.

(Sorry for the poor photo quality; my camera isn't the greatest, I have no idea how to change the settings, and it was low on battery power.)
 
That flower remained in bloom the next day, and then wilted and fell off that evening. Two more mature buds blossomed the day after.

I'd never seen a flower pop open before. The gentleman who takes care of the grounds at this place tells me that later on in the summer we can expect several buds popping open every night. Cool.

A Profile of the Artist a'la B.F. Skinner

Been in a funk this last week or so. Moving slower, thinking slower, sleeping more. Reading B.F. Skinner's About Behaviorism as a reference for a novel-length manuscript I'm going to be touching up and completing sometime during the next couple of months, but my continuing travails with the previous novel make me wonder if it's even worthwhile.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

When I had the finished manuscript of The Zeroes on my hands in 2010, I set about trying to turn it into a distributed book. Publishers don't want to deal with writers directly (I can't wholly blame them), so they turn to independent literary agents to sift through the heaps of incoming submissions and pull out manuscripts that might prove valuable to them. (It is not a given that "good" and "valuable" have any correlation.)

The publishing world is a rigorously-guarded community protected by procedural moats, walls, and a kind of xenophobia. Literary agents are its gatekeepers, and they're averse to admitting anyone who's not already on the guest list. In order to keep out the riffraff, many agents employ the same confoundingly circular requirements as those employers who demand three years of experience for an entry-level position: they are uninterested in dealing with anybody who hasn't already been published, and a person can only get published by first dealing with a literary agent. The system undoubtedly saves a lot of time and prevents a lot of bad books from being published, but it also means that it's frequently the case that only celebrities and authors who were famous beforehand have any chance of seeing publication.

So I attempted to bypass them by doing it DIY, and now I've got a self-published book -- but no distribution or publicity. Literature isn't like visual art: a consumer can't just glance at it and immediately decide it's something he likes or wants to support. A 300-page book is a commitment that an author must convince his potential customers to take on, and people are (understandably) reluctant to indenture their time to somebody's story unless they have it on good authority that the expense will pay off.

A friend of mine who's in the business of public outreach suggested I send out a bunch of printed advance copies to reviewers in order to drum up interest among literate consumers. Unfortunately, my experience thus far has been just as disheartening as the summer-long ordeal with the literary agents. The consistent response from the lit mags and review blogs has been that they don't want to touch anyone's book unless it's being sent to them by a publisher. No exceptions.

I don't think it would be especially paranoid or inaccurate of me to observe that there's a vast, wide-spanning conspiracy trying to prevent me from accomplishing my goals. Nevermind that it's indeliberate and that they don't have it out for me as an individual (to them I am a nonentity), but these fuckers are all in league with one another, and they're all in the business of keeping me from getting through the gate.

I'm beginning to wonder why I bother. At any rate, I don't see any reason not to accelerate the book's forthcoming print release to the end of March/beginning of April as previously planned.

There are sometimes instances of an uncanny sense of alignment in one's experience. A work-related acquaintance to whom I lent the original review proof recently took exception to a line about nostalgia (and how it's a false joy) in an early chapter. Meanwhile, my own hapless adventures in trying to get this book published and read are coming to closely resemble the tribulations of its luckless, worn-down characters; and concurrent with these two circumstances is my sitting around and reading About Behaviorism to take my mind off things (though Skinner would eschew such an idiom) and ponder some of the details of this new manuscript.

Then I come across this passage:

The probability that a person will respond in a given way because of a history of operant reinforcement changes as the contingencies change. Associated bodily conditions can be felt or observed introspectively, and they are often cited as the causes of the states or changes in probability.

When a given act is almost always reinforced, a person is said to have a feeling of confidence. A tennis player reports that he practices a particular shot "until he feels confident"; the basic fact is that he practices until a certain proportion of his shots are good. Frequent reinforcement also builds faith. A person feels sure, or certain, that he will be successful. He enjoys a sense of mastery, power, or potency. The infant is said to acquire a sense of infantile omnipotence. Frequent reinforcement also builds and maintains an interest in what a person is doing. In all this the behavior is erroneously attributed to the feelings rather than to the contingencies responsible for what is felt.

When reinforcement is no longer forthcoming, behavior undergoes "extinction" and appears rarely, if at all. A person is then said to suffer a loss of confidence, certainty, or sense of power. Instead, his feelings range from a lack of interest through disappointment, discouragement, and a sense of impotence to a possibly deep depression, and then these feelings are said — erroneously — to explain the absence of the behavior. For example, a person is said to be unable to go to work because he is discouraged or depressed, although his not going, together with what he feels, is due to a lack of reinforcement — either in his work or in some other part of his life.

Frustration is a different condition, which includes a tendency, often characteristic of a failure to be reinforced, to attack the system. Thus, a person who kicks the vending machine which has failed to deliver cigarettes or bawls out his wife who has forgotten to buy them is said to do so because of frustration. The expression "frustrated expectations" refers specifically to a condition produced by the termination of accustomed reinforcement.

A different kind of feeling is associated with the lack of an appropriate occasion for behavior, the archetypal pattern of which is homesickness. When a person has left home for the first time, much of the behavior appropriate to that environment can no longer be emitted. The condition felt may be similar to depression, which is said to be common in people who have moved from one city to another. It is called "nostalgia" — literally, the pain generated by a strong tendency to return home when return is impossible. A similar condition prevails when one is simply lost, and the word then is "forlorn." A "lovelorn" person is unable to emit behavior directed toward the person he loves. A person who is alone may feel lonesome; the essential condition is that there is no one with whom he can talk or behave in other ways. The behavior of the homesick, forlorn, lovelorn, or lonely is commonly attributed to the feelings experienced rather than to the absence of a familiar environment.

Most reinforcements occur intermittently, and the schedules on which they are programmed generate conditions which are described with a wide range of terms. The so-called ratios schedules supply many good examples. When the ratio of responses to reinforcements is favorable, the behavior is commonly attributed to (1) diligence, industry, or ambition, (2) determination, stubbornness, staying power, or perseverance (continuing to respond over long periods of time without results), (3) excitement or enthusiasm, or (4) dedication or compulsion.

The ratio of response to reinforcements may be "stretched" until it becomes quite unfavorable. This has happened in many incentive systems, such as the piece-rate pay of home industries in the nineteenth century. The schedule generations a dangerously high level of activity, and those interested in the welfare of workers usually oppose it. It is not unknown, however, in daily life. A writer who makes his living by writing one article or story after another is on a kind of fixed-ratio schedule, and he is often aware of one result: the completion of one article is followed by a period resembling extinction during which he is unable to start a new one. The condition is sometimes called "abulia," defined as a lack of will power, or a neurotic inability to act, and this is often cited as the source of the trouble, in spite of the fact that this schedule produces a similar effect in a wide range of species.

Extrapolate from this what you will.

Went out around three last night to smoke a cigarette. Skies were clear. Orion had sank below the the western horizon. Arcturus was overhead; Vega was approaching from the east. Season's changing. We're on the up and up.

*Image up top lifted from Zack Henkel. Original source unknown.

On Astrology: Hamal and Magog

Image robbed from Winter Sky Tour

Still living on the Quaker retreat. Busy. Not sleeping enough -- or maybe sleeping too much? Withdrawn. Simultaneously relishing the belated onset of winter and hoping it won't be long until I can sit out by the pond in short sleeves and croak with the frogs.

Anyway. Living at a place like this, I'm frequently exposed to an assortment of religious (and/or spiritual) people. Because of Quakerism's unusual status as an offshoot of Christianity with a (relatively) radical appreciation for pluralism, the folks visiting this place span the gradient from Episcopalian preachers to non-denominational, self-described mystics. Settling in a place where I'm very likely the only atheist on the grounds during a given day has been a strange interlude to a principally secular life.

As a general rule and matter of courtesy, I keep my mouth shut about my own beliefs and never comment when other people mention or profess theirs to me. Besides -- the only occasions I've ever experienced any compulsion to blurt out you believe what? has been when some fellow or other passing through explains how he can attribute his erratic behavior to the retrograde motion of the planet Mars or assures me he could tell me everything I ever wanted to know about myself if he were provided with the precise hour and minute I was withdrawn from my mother's abdomen.

Astrology gets on my nerves. Yeah, yeah -- I enjoy checking my horoscope in Cosmopolitan and being told to treat myself to a bubble bath and a margarita as much as anyone else; why deny it? But some people -- some otherwise intelligent people -- put some serious intellectual stock into this "the stars control us" business. I've met a visitor here who actually consults his astrological charts for guidance on important life decisions; In I've met another elsewhere in the past who admitted reluctance to taking the next step in an otherwise happy and stable dating relationship because of his partner's supposedly incompatible sign.

The question that's always trying to leap out of my throat is HOW DOES THIS WORK?! What's making this happen? What force is doing the pushing and pulling? Which exchange particles should I be paying attention to?

One suggestion I've heard advocated is that the gravitational forces of distant stars provide the mechanical basis for astrology. After all, every iota of mass in the universe creates a gravitational field that (theoretically) stretches out across the rest of the universe. The attractive force of the effect diminishes with distance, but its value never actually reaches zero.

So: what if the infinitesimal -- but real and quantifiable -- tug of the stars on a newborn infant pulls its cells (which cells? nerve cells? endocrine system cells? blood cells?) in a certain way that tends to foster certain predictable traits upon the rudiments of its personality?

It just so happens that modern astrophysics is founded upon the fact that it's possible for any amateur twit with no great mathematical talent (such as your correspondent) to easily calculate the strength of the gravitational force between a pair of objects, provided he has a good idea of their masses and how far apart they are. Why don't we sit down and actually put a number to the gravitational influence of a star upon a newborn human infant?

As you recall, the gravitational force equation runs something like:

F = force (newtons)
m₁ = 1st object's mass (kilograms)
m₂ = 2nd object's mass (kilograms)
r = distance between the two objects (meters)
G = gravitational constant (value is always 6.67 × 10^-11 N m²/kg²)

So! First, we have our infant, who has just popped out of a womb somewhere on planet Earth. Its mass is 3.4 kg (7.5 pounds); that's all we need to know about it. (Also, its name is Magog.)

Next, we have Hamal (α Arietis), the brightest star in the constellation Aries, which at this moment happens to appear directly above the hospital in the night sky. Hamal is about sixty-six light years from Earth (6.24 × 10²⁹ m) and "weighs" about two solar masses (3.978 × 10³⁰ kg).

This is pretty much all the data we require in order to calculate the strength of the gravitational force between baby Magog and the giant Hamal.

(6.67 × 10^-11 N m²/kg²) × (3.978 × 10³⁰ kg) × (3.4 kg) / (6.24 × 10²⁹ m)²

F = 2.314 × 10^-39 N

To put it another way, the gravitational force exerted upon Magog by the distant Hamal amounts to 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000002314 newtons. Using the equation associated with Newton's Second Law of Motion (F = ma), we can determine how this might physically affect little Magog:

2.314 × 10^-39 N = 3.4 kg × a m/s²

a = 1.47 × 10^-39 m/s²

Baby Magog's body is impelled to accelerate upwards toward Hamal at a rate of 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000147 meters per second per second.

2.314 × 10^-39 N isn't nothing, but it might as well be. If the biological bases of the human personality are sensitive enough to be affected by such an infinitesimally minor influence, the stars are the least of our concerns.

Meanwhile, at this very moment, a Boeing 747 flies overhead at about 9,753.6 meters (32,000 feet) above the room containing little Magog. The plane has a mass of about 370,000 kg. How much of an attractive force is created between the baby and the Boeing?

(6.67 × 10^-11 N m²/kg²) × (3.7 × 10⁵ kg) × (3.4 kg) / (9.7536 × 10³ m)²

F = 8.82 × 10^-13 N

If we ring the values through the F=ma equation, we find that the baby's body wants to accelerate toward the plane at a rate of 0.000000000000259 meters per second per second. It's still not really going anywhere, but Magog's mass is sure more eager to jump for the plane than the star.

And meanwhile, six feet (1.83 meters) away from the baby stands the physician, Dr. Williams, who possesses a bodily mass of 75 kilograms. You know the drill.

(6.67 × 10^-11 N m²/kg²) × (75 kg) × (3.4 kg) / (1.83 m)²

F = 5.0788 × 10^-9 N

Hmm. So the math suggests that another human being standing in the same room as baby Magog exerts a gravitational force on the kid that's stronger than Hamal's by a factor of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. (Please double-check my arithmetic and let me know if I screwed up somewhere.)

Again: if the stars are able to exert a direct influence upon the individual human psyche as the result of a gravitational exchange, then we should be terrified. It would follow that the positions of where Pa Magog, Dr. Williams, and The Nurse are standing in the labor room could very well determine whether baby Magog assumes the personality traits of a Nobel laureate or a serial killer. It would be pointless trying to understand his or anybody's personality: our psyches would be perpetually and unpredictably changing, moment by moment, at every piddling difference in the ambient smattering of extraneous gravitational force vectors.

Early last year, when I asked somebody else to explain her assertion that astrology has a physical basis, suggested it probably has something to do with electromagnetic radiation. Hmm. Well, how much brighter do the fluorescent lights in the hospital seem than the stars outside the window? The answer will give us an idea of how much more electromagnetic radiation they're throwing than the stars onto baby Magog. If the stars' electromagnetic emissions are the means by which they contribute to the sculpting of the individual human personality, we might be better off using the positioning of birth ward lamps as a basis for predicting and categorizing human traits.

I love the stars. They're invaluable navigational aids, better keepers of time than a calendar, an inexhaustible source of inspiration for existential ruminations, and one of the most useful of our fragmentary ciphers into the "mind" of the cosmos. But trusting in astrology makes just as much practical sense as the obedience of any other unverifiable superstition, and validating one's suppositions by invoking a science that clearly refutes them seems evasive, if not vacuous. (But what does an amateur twit like me know?)

"In His Efforts to Get to the Bottom of Things the Laureate Comes Within Sight of Malden, but So Far from Arriving There, Nearly Falls Into the Stars"

For your reading enjoyment this evening, I have transcribed a passage about humanity's psychological relationship with the universe (a topic we've touched upon from time to time) from John Barth's opus, The Sot-Weed Factor, published in 1960.

The date of publication bears especial mentioning because it sure as hell doesn't read like something written in the second half of the 20th Century: Barth purposefully (and brilliantly) imitates the style and structure of an epic novel from the 18th Century. In this is it is very much like a literary Venture Brothers, blurring the line between parodical pastiche and earnest homage to the extent that it's neither more of one than the other.

The bulk of the story covers the final years of the 17th Century in the life of the British poet Ebenezer Cooke. This qualifies The Sot-Weed Factor for the designation of historical novel (again, in a a parodic sense), since Ebenezer Cooke was a real person, whose claim to fame was a 700-line satirical poem whose title Barth borrows as the name of his own masterwork. Biographical details about the "real" Cooke are scarce; except for the material concerning the "The Sot-Weed Factor's" publication in the early 18th century, everything in Barth's fictitious account is from his own imagination.

Barth's Eben Cooke is cast in the mold of Voltaire's Candide -- he is well-bred and exceptionally educated, but an utter stranger to the workings of the world beyond the academy and his father's Middlesex estate. In a keen stroke of metatextual parody, Eben comes to hold his own innocence (which the reader immediately perceives as his most salient characteristic) as his highest personal virtue. Nobody should be surprised that Eben's introduction to the great wide yonder is just as excruciatingly (and hilariously) jarring as Candide's.

Eben's journey begins when he receives a commission from Lord Baltimore himself to sail to across the Atlantic and pen a poetical epic that sings and immortalizes the great virtues and heroes of Baltimore Colony. Scarcely does he arrive on the shores of present-day Maryland when his fantastic visions of a pastoral New World Ilium are rudely shattered: contrary to his expectations, Baltimore Colony is a swampy shithole populated by criminals, drunkards, slavers, prostitutes, opium-smugglers, hucksters, and worse. (You can read all about it in the original "Sot-Weed Factor" by the original Eben Cooke.)

But the real star of the novel, as far as I'm concerned, is Eben's teacher, guide, and friend, Henry Burlingame -- 25% Dante's Virgil, 25% Candide's Pangloss, and 50% Faustus's Mephistopheles. Comic book fans will surely spot something of Marvel Comics' Mystique in him as well -- Henry is a bona fide shapeshifter, appearing in various guises and a Rolodex of assumed names, acting as a double and triple agent in the machinations of the New World's conflicting power brokers -- a game into which he draws the hapless Eben Cooke.

That's the basic context of the passage you're about to read. Eben has just staggered into Baltimore Colony (after an altercation with some pirates off the coast) and has just convened at an inn with with Henry Burlingame, having just encountered him in one of his various guises. Burlingame has filled him in on the latest developments in the political intrigues concerning the colony's future, and the already disoriented Eben becomes distraught:

Ebenezer shook his head in a matter not clearly affirmative or negative. "That is a part of it, Henry; you go at such a pace, I have no time to think things through as they deserve! I cannot collect my wits e'en to think of all the questions I would ask, much less explore your answers. How can I know what I must do and where I stand?"

Burlingame laid his arm across the poet's shoulders and smiled. "What is't you describe, my friend, if not man's lot? He is by mindless lust engendered and by mindless wrench expelled, from the Eden of the womb to the motley, mindless world. He is Chance's fool, the toy of aimless Nature — a mayfly flitting down the winds of Chaos!"

"You mistake my meaning," Ebenezer said, lowering his eyes.

Burlingame was undaunted: his eyes glittered. "Not by much, methinks. Once long ago we sat like this, at an inn near Magdalene College — do you remember? And I said, 'Here we sit upon a blind rock hurtling through a vacuum,¹ racing to the grave.' 'Tis our fate to search, Eben, and do we seek our soul, what we find is a piece of that same black Cosmos whence we sprang and through which we fall: the infinite wind of space. . ."

In fact a night wind hand sprung up and was buffeting the inn. Ebenezer shivered and clutched the edge of the table. "But there is so much unanswered and unresolved! It dizzies me!"

"Marry!" laughed Henry. "If you saw it clear enough 'twould not dizzy you: 'twould drive you mad! This inn here seems a little isle in a sea of madness, doth it not? Blind Nature howls without, but here 'tis calm — how dare we leave? Yet lookee round you at these men that dine and play at cards, as if the sky were their mother's womb! They remind me of the chickens I once saw fed to a giant snake in Africa: when the snake struck one, the others squawked and fluttered, but a moment after they were scratching about for corn, or standing on his very back to preen their feathers! How is't these men don't run a-gibbering down the streets, if not that their minds are lulled to sleep?" He pressed the poet's arm. "You know as well as I that human work can be magnificent; but in the face of what's out yonder" — he gestured skywards — "'tis the industry of Bedlam! Which sees the state of things more clearly: the cock that preens on the python's back, or the lunatic that trembles in his cell?"²

Ebenezer sighed. "Yet I fail to see the relevance of this; 'tis not germane at all to what I had —"

"Not germane?" Burlingame exclaimed. "'Tis the very root and stem of't! Two things alone can save a man from madness." He indicated the others patrons of the inn. "Dull-headedness is one, and far the commoner: the truth that drives men mad must be sought for ere it's found, and it eludes the doltish or myopic hunter. But once 'tis caught and looked on, whether by insight or instruction, the captor's sole expedient is to force his will upon't ere it work his ruin! Why is't you set such store by innocence and rhyming, and I by searching out my father and battling Coode?³ One must needs make and seize his soul, and then cleave fast to't, or go babbling in the corner; one must choose his gods and devils on the run, quill his own name upon the universe, and declare, 'Tis I, and the world stands such-a-way!' One must assert, assert, assert, or go screaming mad. What other course remains?"

"One other," said Ebenezer with a blush. "'Tis the one I flee. . ."

"What? Ah, 'sheart indeed! The state I found you in at college!⁴ How many have I seen like that at Bedlam — wide-eyed, feculent, and blind to the world! Some boil their life into a single gesture and repeat it o'er and o'er; others are so far transfixed, their limbs remain where'er you place 'em; still others take on false identities: Alexander, or the Pope in Rome, or e'en the Poet Laureate of Maryland ——"

Ebenezer looked up, uncertain whether it was he or the impostors whom Burlingame referred to.

"The upshot of't is," his friend concluded, "if you'd escape that fate you must embrace me or reject me, and the course we are committed to, despite the shifting lights that we appear in, just as you must embrace your Self as Poet and Virgin, regardless, or discard it for something better."⁵ He stood up. "In either case don't seek whole understanding — the search were fruitless, and there is no time for't. Will you come with me now, or stay?"

Ebenezer frowned and squinted. "I'll come," he said finally, and went out with Burlingame to the horses. The night was wild, but not unpleasant: a warm, damp wind roared out of the southwest, churned the river to a froth, bent the pines like whips, and drove a scud across the stars. Both men looked up at the splendid night.

"Forget the word sky," Burlingame said off-handedly, swinging up on his gelding, "'tis a blinder to your eyes. There is no dome of heaven yonder."

Ebenezer blinked twice or thrice: with the aid of these instructions, for the first time in his life he saw the night sky. The stars were no longer points on a black hemisphere that hung like a sheltering roof above his head; the relationship between them he saw now in three dimensions, of which the one most deeply felt was depth. The length and breadth of space between the stars seemed trifling by comparison: what struck him now was that some were nearer, some farther out, and others unimaginably remote. Viewed in this manner, the constellations lost their sense entirely; their spurious character revealed itself, as did the false presupposition of the celestial navigator, and Ebenezer felt bereft of orientation. He could no longer think of up and down: the stars were simply out there, as well below him as above, and the wind appeared to howl not from the Bay⁶ but from the firmament itself, the endless corridors of space.

"Madness!" Henry whispered.

Ebenezer's stomach churned; he swayed in the saddle and covered his eyes. For a swooning moment before he turned away it seemed that he was heels over head on the bottom of the planet, looking down on the stars instead of up, and that only by dint of clutching his legs about the roan mare's girth and holding fast to the saddlebow with both his hands did he keep from dropping headlong into those vasty⁷ reaches!

[1] Burlingame must be a greater prodigy than even he knows: it wasn't until the 20th Century that the existence of the interstellar vacuum achieved general acceptance. Even Newton himself accepted aether theory to account for light's propagation through empty space.

[2] This passage reminds me of one of my favorite books, Celia Green's The Human Evasion.

[3] A treasonous machinator who Burlingame seeks to undermine. Barth probably is poking fun at the abstruse webs of intrigue found in 17th and 18th Century novels, but in any case The Sot-Weed Factor's player chart is probably impossible to follow without the aid of a detailed diagram. I finished the book and still have no idea whether its Coode is an out-of-reach schemer, a boogeyman invented by Burlingame, or Henry himself. This in itself may warrant a reread.

[4] Remember that year or two after graduating from college where you moved back in with your parents, worked a part-time job, and sat around playing video games, smoking weed, sleeping until noon, and wondering what the hell to DO with your useless life? Eben was in similar straits during the time to which he refers. He has no desire to go back to it.

[5] One chapter ago, during Eben and Henry's reunion:

"You were so much altered when I saw you last, and now you've altered back to what you were!"

"'Tis easy but to say oft what I've said to you ere now, Eben: your true and constant Burlingame lives only in your fancy, as doth the pointed order of the world. In fact you see a Heraclitean flux: whether 'tis we who shift and alter and dissolve; or you whose lens changes color, field, and focus; or both together. The upshot is the same, and you may take it or reject it."

[6] The Chesapeake, of course.

[7] "Vasty?" Really, Mr. Barth?

Space: Outer and Inner (Part 1.5)

Image filched from The Old Farmer's Almanac

For the past two months I've been a resident and employee at a Quaker retreat center outside of Philadelphia. I affectionately refer to the place as "the farm" in conversation, but the place isn't a farm, and it's really not in the middle of nowhere. It's something like a commune with a business model: most of the residents/clients are recent college graduates, retired folks, or people experiencing a period of transition. This place gives them a setting in which they can live with other people in similar circumstances, participate in workshops, and figure out their next move. It is a religious place (and I am, of course, an atheist), but the Quakers are not what you'd expect from a Christian sect in the States. In all the weeks I've been here, nobody has ever once tried to talking to me about Jesus. Early on, a few people asked me if I was a Quaker, and did not pry any further when I answered in the negative. All I'm saying is that this godless blasphemer isn't making a peep of complaint about the company he's kept lately. (They're tolerant to the point where I'm a little tempted to show up at a morning worship meeting and shout out HAIL SATAN. They probably wouldn't be too happy about it, but there is actually a nonzero possibility that they would give me the chance to explain myself afterwards -- and I can make a pretty good case for Satan.)

But I digress!

One of the daily events at this place is a gathering called Epilogue. Like pretty much all of the religious stuff at this place, it's totally optional. But what it usually consists of is a short reading, song, or meditation session in order to close out the day. A couple of weeks ago, one of the folks in charge of scheduling daily and weekly events approached me and said she heard tell I was something of a stargazing buff.

"How would you like to lead an outdoor Epilogue one night?" she asked. "You could say a few words about the stars and point out some constellations for us."

I sure as hell wasn't about to say no.

It's probably going to happen sometime this week, whenever the skies clear up. I've drafted a text of what I'd like to say. It would be sloppy of me to read from a sheet of paper, so what I'm probably going to do is read it over a few (A FEW HUNDRED THOUSAND) times and reduce it to a series of points and subpoints in my memory. But here's hoping whatever comes out of my mouth goes something like....

Tonight it is my privilege to direct to your attention: eternity. Or, at least, the largest piece of it we are capable of observing directly under ordinary circumstances.

Today we have a pretty good idea (or at least some supremely educated guesses) about the nature of these distant points of light – what they're made of, how they work, how they're born, and what happens when they die. But it has only been in the last five hundred years of our species' 200,000-year history that we've made such a stupendous breakthrough. But even before humanity acquired the technological and intellectual tools to understand it, THIS [gesturing upwards] was there, tantalizing the imaginations of our ancestors.

Even without the aid of telescopes, sophisticated mathematics, or even a written language, our predecessors' powers of reason and observation were keen enough to notice a few important characteristics of the stars: namely, that their relative positions to each other in the sky remain fixed, and their movement across the celestial sphere corresponds with the solar cycles. Given the stars' usefulness as agricultural time-markers and navigational tools, our ancestors had a far more intimate relationship with the heavens than we do to today, despite their total lack of knowledge regarding the stars' physical properties.

What we're seeing now is a textbook picture of the autumn sky – a nice, fairly subtle, transitional scene, and the very setting where my own experience as a stargazer began. Looking to the west, you'll see triangle of summer stars Vega, Deneb, and Altair, of the constellations Lyra (the lyre), Cygnus (the swan), and Aquila (the eagle) sinking toward the horizon. Of these, Cygnus is the easiest to spot from here – simply direct your gaze this way, to the four stars that look like the top of a cross. Were there less light pollution, you might be able to see the Milky Way stretching from the northeast and cutting through the Triangle to the southwest – but to borrow a sentiment from a former Secretary of Defense, you go to stargaze with the sky you got.

[Note: if all goes according to plan, I will be pointing these out with a special green laser pen developed for just such an exercise.]

The fact that we still identify the stars by these groupings and these names is an intellectual relic of our ancestors. Presented with a span of objects that they could not approach, touch, or examine, our ancestors' imaginations compelled them to associate the stars with their mythological figures and cultural symbols. Dominating the sky at the moment is a patch of constellations representing the myth of Perseus and Andromeda. The W-shaped asterism right above us is Cassiopeia, the vain queen of Ethiopia who boasted that her beauty excelled that of Poseidon's sea nymphs. In the direction where the shape seems opening up is the constellation Cepheus, named for Cassiopeia’s complicit husband; and at Cassiopeia's turned “back” is her daughter Andromeda, whom she offered up as a sacrifice to quell Poseidon's wrath. Below Cassiopeia is the hero Perseus, the slayer of Medusa and forebear of a long line of Achaean kings; and between him and Andromeda you'll find a leg of Pegasus, the flying horse Perseus rode to rescue Andromeda from the sea monster Cetus – who is represented by his own constellation some ways to the south of Pegasus.

Below Perseus is the Auriga (the Charioteer), marked by the brilliant Capella – the uppermost point of the Winter Hexagon (or Winter Circle), the emblem of the rising winter sky. At the ring's center you'll find Betelgeuse, the second-brightest star of the hibernal hunter Orion.

I would also like to draw your attention to a visitor: the planet Jupiter, skirting the rim of the constellation Aries (the ram). We shall call him a visitor because, unlike the rest of what we’re seeing, he is not a permanent fixture of the sky. (Though of course, “permanence” is a term that speaks to the limitations of our temporal perspective. Had we a sufficiently long memory and broadness of vision, we would appreciate that virtually nothing in this existence is permanent – but I digress.)

Our word “planet” comes from the Greek term planetes aster, meaning “wandering star.” Unlike the “fixed” stars of the firmament, the planets move across the sky at their own paces, with an apparent erraticism that we've come to fully understand and accurately predict out only within the last few centuries, as our understanding of our place in the cosmos has transcended mythological models and guesstimates founded on inaccurate assumptions and scant data. Thanks to [name deleted] and her telescope, we can vouchsafe from Jupiter an example of our progressive knowledge.

What you’re seeing are the four Galilean Satellites, discovered by the great Galileo Galilei and named for four of Jove’s young human lovers: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Their discovery in 1610 did far more than afford another well-off white male the chance to name four little dots in the sky after his fancy; they demonstrated a principle. Here was evidence to support the then-controversial heliocentric model of the sun and planets: the fact that these objects orbited a body other than the Earth proved that our world is not the central fulcrum of all existence, as was previously assumed.

Galileo was a link in the recent chain of scientific enlightenment that began with Copernicus and Kepler, and continued on through Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Albert Einstein, Edwin Hubble, Stephen Hawking, et cetera. Their work has furnished humanity with an exponentially more accurate conception its cosmic existence than it possessed at any other time in its history.

There is too little time, and my own knowledge is too limited to go into much detail beyond what you learned in science class. You already know we’re looking at a multitude of burning nuclear orbs flying through the void, each individually more massive and farther away than our terrestrial experience has equipped us to appreciate.

Even if we do not have the time or inclination to memorize all their names and educate ourselves about the physical processes that make them what they are, we should at the very least be mindful of them, and of the fact that our existence is by no means whatsoever separate from theirs.

I would imagine that most of us have come here in order to better understand who we are and what we should do with the time we’re afforded as conscious entities on this planet. You would not argue with me if I suggested that we cannot hope to attain a full understanding of a person – or of a people, a civilization, or a species – without taking into account the setting of his (or their) existence. (The world is, after all, much more than just a flat backdrop to human affairs.) I do not think it is a leap of logic to induce the equal importance of examining the cosmos in which the Earth bubbled up (whether by chance or grace of god) in our efforts to arrive at a substantial understanding of our world.

If we do not consider our situation from a cosmic standpoint – and all the implications this presents – any self-knowledge we profess to have will be tremendously incomplete.

Now is a fine time to start looking upwards and thinking it over – there are few better times for stargazing during the winter months, when the air is clear and the skies are dark. If you require an intellectual starting point in your meditations, I might advise Psalm 19: "The Heavens declare the glory of God." But bear in mind that this is only a springboard. Like any useful piece of Scripture, the simplicity of the phrasing belies a world of meaning that demands to be explored.

Late August grab bag: Orion, Ramadan, poetry.

(Image stolen from Astro Bob.)

The other night I received this text message from my friend James:

August 23, 2001, 4:00 a.m.: Orion can be seen low on the horizon, and all is right with the universe. The plump crescent Moon is higher in the sky, Ramadan will be over soon.

I suspect James wished to challenge my assertion that Orion is a winter constellation -- which it is, although it first begins to appear on the horizon toward the beginning of September. He also probably spoke to our shared casual interest in Islam -- fostered in him by his political science background (coupled with the decades of American entanglement in Middle East) and in me by my dabbling in medieval Arabic literature and science; and in both of us by our mutual friend Nickie, a Muslim convert.

Indeed it is Ramadan, though not for much longer.

This seems as good a time as any to share a piece I copied from an issue of Poetry magazine a few years back. It got mixed up in all my papers, and unexpectedly turned up the other day while I was doing some housekeeping.

So! In honor of Ramadan's conclusion (and so I can finally discard the crinkled and folded hard copy), here is a piece by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwin for your reading pleasure.

To a Young Poet
by Mahmoud Darwish (1941 – 2008)
Translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah

Don't believe our outlines, forget them,
and begin from your own words.
As if you are the first two write poetry
or the last poet.

If you read our work, let it not be an extension of our affairs,
but to correct our errs
in the book of agony.

Don't ask anyone: Who am I?
You know who your mother is.
As for your father, be your own.

Truth is white, write over it
with a crow's ink.
Truth is black, write over it
with a mirage's light.

If you want to duel with a falcon
soar with the falcon.

If you fall in love with a woman,
be the one, not she,
who desires his end.

Life is less alive than we think but we don't think
of the matter too much lest we hurt emotions' health.

If you ponder a rose for too long
you won't budge in a storm.

You are like me, but my abyss is clear.
And you have roads whose secrets never end.
They descend and ascend, descend and ascend.

You might call the end of youth
the maturity of talent
or wisdom. No doubt, it is wisdom,
the wisdom of a cool non-lyric.

One thousand birds in the hand
don't equal one bird that wears a tree.

A poem is a difficult time
is beautiful flowers in a cemetery.

Example is not easy to attain
so be yourself and other than yourself
behind the borders of echo.

Ardor has an expiration date with extended range.
So fill up with fervor for your heart's sake,
follow it before you reach your path,

Don't tell the beloved, you are I
and I am you, say
the opposite of that: we are two guests
of an excess, fugitive cloud.

Deviate, with all your might, deviate from the rule.

Don't place two stars in one utterance
and place the marginal next to the essential
to complete the rising rapture.

Don't believe the accuracy of our instructions.
Believe only the caravan's trace.

A moral is as a bullet in its poet's heart
a deadly wisdom.

Be strong as a bull when you're angry
weak as an almond blossom
when you love, and nothing, nothing
when you serenade yourself in a closed room.

The road is long like an ancient poet's night:
plains and hills, rivers and valleys.
Walk according to your dream's measure: either a lily
follows you or the gallows.

Your tasks are not what worry me about you.
I worry about you from those who dance
over their children's graves,
and from the hidden cameras
in the singers' navels.

You won't disappoint me,
if you distance yourself from others, and from me.
What doesn't resemble me is more beautiful.

From now on, your only guardian is your neglected future.

Don't think, when you melt in sorrow
like candle tears, of who will see you
or follow your intuition's light.
Think of yourself: is this all of myself?

The poem is always incomplete, the butterflies make it whole.

No advice in love. It's experience.
No advice in poetry. It's talent.

And last but not least, Salaam.

Space, Outer and Inner (Part I)

Since May of last year, after the abyssal horror of the Final Fantasy XIII experience forced me to reevaluate how I spend my time, I've been stargazing and reading up on astronomy as an alternative hobby. Among the most remarkable observations I've made is how little the topics of astronomy and outer space seem to interest people.

Last February I showed a few acquaintances the Orion Nebula through my fancy binoculars. (Around that time I was habitually taking a peek at it nearly every evening. Not that it changes or does anything perceptibly different on a night-to-night basis, but the sight of it is astonishing -- all the more so, I felt, because I could see it with my own eyes.) When I mounted the binoculars on a tripod and invited these folks to see it for themselves, they each look for a few seconds and went back inside. Their reactions ranged from underwhelmed to disappointed.

(Here we find an unfortunate side-effect of the Hubble Space Telescope. People unaccustomed to looking through telescopes become familiar with fantastic images like the Pillars of Creation and the Hubble Deep Field, thereby setting expectations that a regular telescope simply can't match. By the time you finish explaining to them that it's unrealistic to expect a portable optical device to match the quality of images produced by a multimillion-dollar roboscope looking out from above the atmosphere through a lens with a 0.05 arc-second resolving power and enhanced by computer processing, your guests have already gone in to watch Nyan Cat for another half hour.)

I don't expect that everyone should be as fascinated by the heavens as I am, but I would think that they should hold at least some interest to most people. Instead, I've found that the subject usually arouses mild indifference or antipathy. During a car ride when I had a Richard Feynman lecture on gravitation in the CD player, my friend in the passenger seat asked, with some exasperation, why I chose to concern myself with something that made no practical difference in my life.

"You're going to stay home and look at the stars? What, you wouldn't rather come out to a bar? Why don't you go out and meet people? You should be trying to meet girls. You need a girlfriend, Pat. If you had a girlfriend, why, you wouldn't be so lonely that you'd choose to stay at home by yourself and look at the stars instead of coming out to the bar."

That which is most immediately useful about studying space (in any degree of intensity) is also what makes it such a tantalizing subject. It lends a certain perspective to your view of the world that is difficult to attain elsewhere in your day-to-day life. (I use "world" in the subjective sense, as opposed to the objective "Earth.")

Here's something you might do for yourself to see what I mean. Go outside tonight around 11:00 or so. (Actually, it might help to wait a week or two so that the moon isn't so damned bright) and find the Big Dipper. (Hint: look north.) If you follow the stars of its "tail" and keep moving in the same curved line, you'll bump into a bright star. Trust me, you'll know it when you see it.
This image, courtesy of Astrobob, will give you some idea of what to look for.

Do note that it won't be as far west as the picture (taken in mid-September) indicates.

This star is Arcturus, the second-brightest star in the night sky of the northern hemisphere, and the centerpiece of the constellation Boötes, the plowman. (Regrettably, the name isn't properly pronounced as "boots;" try "boh-OH-is," instead. However, I will forgive you for saying "boots," as I am guilty of doing it even though I know better.)

Anyway. Once you find Arcturus, begin moving your gaze eastward. The next bright star you find will be Vega (like the Street Fighter character), of the constellation Lyra. If you move your gaze to the southeast, you'll see a second bright star: Altair (like the Final Fantasy village) of the constellation Aquilla. Returning to Vega and looking toward the northeast, you will find a third bright star forming the "head" of a cross-shape formed by three dimmer stars. This bright star is Deneb, of the constellation Cygnus. (As far as I know, no video games reference Deneb.)

Vega, Deneb, and Altair form the corners of the Summer Triangle. Again, from Astrobob:

You should be able to see these three stars even if you live in an urban area with a lot of light pollution. This next step, however, requires you to look from a suburban or rural area, and be carrying a telescope or pair of binoculars.

As you probably know, our galaxy's shape is that of a flat disc. "Flatness," especially in this case, is a matter of proportion. Compared to its 575,205,347,300,000,000-mile (or so) diameter, the Milky Way's 76,694,046,300,000,000-mile (or so) thickness is quite flat.

Since we're looking out at the disc from an object inside the disc (and located toward its outer rim), we perceive the bulk of it a wide band arching across the firmament. In the absence of light pollution, it is dimly visible to the naked eye as a pale streak stretching from one horizon to the next. Not understanding the nature of what they were looking at, the ancients named it the Milky Way and invented a myth to explain it. When we came to realize that the arc represented the largest visible portion of our parent galaxy, we came to identify that galaxy by the name given to the visible arc.

(I apologize if I am repeating something you already know. But from what I recall from my thirteen years in the United States' public school system, I don't believe the curriculum ever addressed anything beyond Pluto in much detail. I can't be certain what anyone else reading this knows or doesn't know.)

The Summer Triangle is superimposed over the Milky Way band. If you're looking from a sufficiently dark region, you don't need me to point this out to you. It can be visible from the suburbs, but you'll need an optical aid. (More powerful is always better, but you can still get a decent glimpse using a pair binoculars designed for, say, watching a football game from the nosebleed section.)
All you have to do is point your scope or your nocks into the center of the triangle and look. If you've never tried it, you might find yourself shocked at how much stuff is out there -- how much light from how many stars are hitting your optic nerves all at once. In a place with moderate light pollution, you might see hundreds. In a place with little or no light pollution, you may see thousands.

If you attended public school in the United States (as I did), you probably received a crash course in astronomy. Chances are that curriculum botched it, as my school's did. The lesson probably went something like this:

"The Moon orbits the Earth. The Earth orbits the Sun. The Sun is very large and made of incandescent gas. The other stars are like the sun, but they are very far away. Are you writing this down? The true/false quiz is on Thursday."

We make a grave mistake by teaching students the facts without informing them as to how we arrived at them. This is like making them memorize the solutions to math problems without teaching them how the problems are solved.

Teaching the facts of science without teaching the methods is only marginally better than pointless.

The purpose of science is to arrive at a more accurate understanding of the physical world though repeated observation, testing, and logical reasoning, with methods that are available for anyone (with the proper know-how and materials) to duplicate themselves. When the answers are given without reference to the process, the student cannot properly appreciate them. For all he knows, the facts in his textbook came from some Neo-Delphic Oracle sealed in a wine casket in some Princeton basement.

On a political note: if science wants to assert itself as the superior alternative to religious dogma where finding out the physical facts is concerned, scientific education must make a better effort toward demonstrating to students that it can do one crucial thing that dogma cannot -- it can show its work.

For instance:

We know that the moon orbits the Earth because of how is path across the celestial sphere differs from those of the sun, the planets, and the stars. We know the Earth orbits the sun for the same reason, and by the same logic we find that the other planets orbit the sun as well. (Mr. Copernicus outlines it very succinctly and eloquently, even though he does fudge a few relatively minor details.)

We deduce that the sun is very large because, for starters, we can use radar to acquire a precise measurement of Venus's distance from Earth in kilometers, and then use that number in conjunction with Kepler's Third Law (p^2 = a^3) to find the a value of a (in this case, 1 A.U., or one "Earth-distance") in kilometers. Knowing exactly how far away Venus is from Earth, and knowing exactly how far away the Sun is from Earth, we observe that the sun appears thirty times larger than Venus in the sky, despite being 2.6 times farther away. The conclusion draws itself.

We understand that the stars are very far away because of observations involving stellar parallax. (Hold your raised index finger six inches from your eyes. Close your left eye. Now open it and close your right eye. Notice how drastically the apparent position of your finger seems to change in relation to object behind it. This is parallax. When we view objects like the Moon or planets from different positions on the Earth's surface,and compare where they appear to lie relative to the stars, we observe a similar displacement.

We know that the stars are similar to the sun in composition because spectroscopic analysis turns up evidence of the same basic materials in the sun and in pretty much every other star we can find.

(I should mention that I am by no means whatsoever an expert or authority. I am only an amateur who wants to share what he has learned.)

Before you take a good look, it helps to know what you're seeing, especially in this case. An object like a star is impossible to touch, approach, turn over, smell, etc. When we tell a student that the star he sees is one particular thing as opposed to numberless other particular things, it is no less important that he gets some understanding of how we came to this conclusion. Otherwise, he has as much a basis for believing that the twinkling dots he sees in the night sky are tremendous fusion-fueled orbs billions of miles away as he does for believing that the weatherman is telling the truth when he smiles, winks, and pulls up the Santa Radar on Christmas Eve. (Do weathermen still do this?)

So what are we seeing when we aim our scope into the middle of the Summer Triangle? The short answer is "stars." Thousands upon thousands of the billions upon billions of stars composing the Milky Way galaxy. Most of these stars are at least similar in size to our Sun, whose diameter is somewhere in the vicinity of 64,950 miles. (Our entire world's diameter amounts to 7,926 miles, remember.) Though they appear close together, the distances between each of these points of light you see are so tremendous that to reckon them in miles would make about as much sense as measuring the length between city blocks in millimeters.

What you're looking at is Eternity. But only a sliver of it.

Thanks to advancements in optics, we now understand that the Milky Way is just one galaxy out of billions and billions.

Here's a fun experiment! This BBC article might be outdated and/or inaccurate, but that's okay. It gives us a number to play around with: 156 billion. Let's say that the universe is 156-billion light-years wide. If we're assuming it's a sphere (the truth is probably a lot more complicated and far beyond my ability to approach), that gives it a radius of 78 billion light years -- or 458,200,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles. Now if we calculate the volume of a sphere with a radius of 458,200,000,000,000,000,000,000, we get...

(4/3) * (π) * (458,200,000,000,000,000,000,000)^3 = oh jeez.

Uh...I'm getting 40,295,250,862,323,019,768,114,206,530,184,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic miles. This is a very sloppy, simplistic, and definitely incorrect approach (it doesn't account for any relativistic space-stretching voodoo, for one thing), but it gives us some idea of how far existence might go. (Earth's volume is about 259,875,899,200 cubic miles. Subtract that from the "number" up above and contemplate how much stuff that's not us is.)

It is very easy not to think about this in your daily life. Most of us probably don't give it a second thought. Stargazing is a pursuit that rather forces you to confront this reality -- though usually in small doses. (When faced with a number as large as the one above, the size of the Milky Way is no less piddlingly infinitesimal than that of the Earth.)

I don't know of anyone who has not been taught that the Earth revolves around a massive Sun and that the universe outside our neighborhood is bigger than we can possibly imagine. Most of us are even used to the idea, but the fact is so rarely brought to bear on our day-to-day existence that we rarely appreciate the significance of this fact.

You can look at Hubble images and listen to Carl Sagan wax poetic about the cosmos, but neither brings you into direct contact with the subject. This is why you need to sometimes go out and be touched by it -- to see, with your own eyes, a thousand stars stretched out over billions of miles.

When formulating an opinion or viewpoint on any subject, it is important to consider as much of the whole of the situation as possible. Otherwise you risk an incomplete conclusion.

When we evaluate ourselves, our world, and ourselves in the context of our world, we cannot omit the underlying facts of the situation. Though we rarely have any direct contact with it, Eternity is there. When assessing himself and his environment, the average person fails to factor it into his personal equation.

Why should he, though? Why fuss over something that brings no immediate (or even perceptible) weight upon his health, his friends, his career, and his hobbies?

This has already careened far enough along for now, but for now I'll close with a question. Even if a person has not given it any direct thought, he is very likely to have already arrived at his answer without being asked.

"Which is more real: the part(s) of reality existing closest to me, or the parts of reality occupying the greatest percentage of the whole?" 

[cont.]

Edit: Says a commentator on Twitter:

they're both equally real this question is dum

I was afraid of this. Maybe that's not the question I want to ask. Maybe what I'm turning over in my addled brain is a matter of significance.

Are the constituents of reality which exist in closest proximity to my experience more significant than the overwhelmingly larger span of reality (matter, energy, time, space, et al) existing outside of my environs?

Why or why not?

And why should this question strike most as an "empty academic point?"