Quiet nights of quiet stars,
quiet chords from my guitar
If only.
I like living where I live, but the damn light pollution fucks everything up. I would like to be able to walk down the street at night, look up at the night sky and gaze at the heavens. To see twinkling specks of distant light and gas peppered across a vast inky infinite void. To feel small and insignificant and humbled by just how fucking big the universe is. I want to see more stars than just Orion's Belt. The ham-fisted imagery is sincere.
This desire for something more is something of a double-edged sword. Not just for me, but for everyone who has ever experienced it at some point in their lives. Some of us want to see more stars than those that are readily available to us. That's not a form of ingratitude but a longing to be able to further appreciate what we already have. What my desire regarding stars boils down to is this: I would like for there to be no light pollution, as it gets in the way of appreciating stars and my place in the universe.
Sometimes, that orange specter that hangs about our night sky looks nice but at what cost?
Yes, one can drive to the mountains or the forest or a place of relatively untamed wilderness to have the eyes and soul bombarded by the sheer sight of the night sky but the point is to be able to appreciate it more readily. To have that seemingly fading gorgeousness be everywhere rather than have to go hundreds of miles out of your way just to see it. The point is to have it everywhere and not have to detach yourself further.
That's just how I see it. I can recognize that there is an accomplishment of some kind in journeying a thousand miles away in order to see that vast, inky sea glimmering across a slice of the universe so infinite and grand.
Yeah.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Ulysses (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought
with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought
with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Friday, November 16, 2012
Under
It has been 2 months since I've posted anything. I have scraps of bits of fragments of entries in the drafts but I haven't posted them or finished them.
The reason for this, frankly, escapes me.
If I had to even begin to theorize anything, it'd be that there is an underwhelming desire to write because there's no sense of satisfaction. Or an obvious one, at least.
Not so much that the page views have always been very few but that I don't get any sense of satisfaction from submitting something to the vastness of the internet in the hopes that someone'll read it. This used to be the case, and I would feel good (or at the very least marginally fulfilled) about the idea of someone reading my work and maybe (by a stretch of the imagination) chuckle or spark a thought in their mind. "He brings up a valid point."
While I realize this is implausible, it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility, is it?
That being said, this is more of an explanation (and a sorry excuse at that) than a post of substance.
Let's hope I can at the very least find my fortunes (the fortune cookie ones, at this point) so I can have something to submit. Maybe trudging along will help me snap out of this funk.
This is a bad funk, not a good one with wah-wah-fied guitars and dope ass bass lines.
The reason for this, frankly, escapes me.
If I had to even begin to theorize anything, it'd be that there is an underwhelming desire to write because there's no sense of satisfaction. Or an obvious one, at least.
Not so much that the page views have always been very few but that I don't get any sense of satisfaction from submitting something to the vastness of the internet in the hopes that someone'll read it. This used to be the case, and I would feel good (or at the very least marginally fulfilled) about the idea of someone reading my work and maybe (by a stretch of the imagination) chuckle or spark a thought in their mind. "He brings up a valid point."
While I realize this is implausible, it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility, is it?
That being said, this is more of an explanation (and a sorry excuse at that) than a post of substance.
Let's hope I can at the very least find my fortunes (the fortune cookie ones, at this point) so I can have something to submit. Maybe trudging along will help me snap out of this funk.
This is a bad funk, not a good one with wah-wah-fied guitars and dope ass bass lines.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)