DARKNESS: WHERE I FIND MY PEACE

I feel a strange kinship with the darkness. It's not something of substance like rocks or water, but it is companion on my life's journey nonetheless. 

As I write this, it is Halloween. A day that maybe honours the darkness more than others.  Children aren't afraid to go walking after dark to go house to house to collect their allotment of sugar. They hide themselves in costumes.  Houses are decorated with ghosts and other creatures of the dark. 

I am not a fan of Halloween anymore as the distribution of sugar is not high on my list anymore ... especially to children who really don't need it. The fear factor isn't something I want to promote anymore either.  Today, though... let me celebrate the darkness. 

Right now I am riding shotgun on our weekly trip to Calgary to deliver and pick up heaters. It is cloudy this morning, so the stars are hidden. So aside from the lights coming from the highway traffic, it is dark. There is nothing to see and nothing to distract a driver from focusing on the road. 

Maybe this is the most perfect picture of life. For the most part, we live in the dark; not knowing from one moment to the next what could spring out of the ditch and come in our path. 

My dictionary says that darkness is the absence of light. But I prefer to see the darkness as our natural state of existence. Light, whether from the sun or our manmade devices, is an intrusion into our world that we have gotten used to because we seem to value sight more than all our other senses. 

In the darkness I don't have to think about what is around me. I can just dwell with my inner thoughts. If I can add some silence to the mix, I can have a moment with no distractions. I think there is where I find peace. 

AIR AND BREATH: WHAT MY MOTHER DIDN'T GIVE ME

My parents are primarily responsible for my existence.  My Dad had a microscopic contribution during one fleeting moment in time.  My Mother had a rather longer contribution known as pregnancy.  She donated her body as a factory that in nine to ten months produced me.  All that happened back in 1967-68.   But there is one thing they couldn’t give me.  I had to leave my mother and be terminated from her life support system in order to embrace the very substance that would sustain me for the rest of my life.   

A quick wikipedia search tells me that substance consists of 78% Nitrogen, 20.9% Oxygen, 0.9% Argon, 0.04% Carbon Dioxide, and the remainder  of other gases like Neon, Helium, Krypton, Hydrogen, Xenon, Methane, Nitrous Oxide, Ozone, Iodine, Ammonia.  And then there is water vapour that contributes to the mix depending on the moisture available .  This is what we call air.  

This is what I gasped for when my umbilical cord was cut.  I had no thoughts to think, I had no decisions to make.  My lungs and diaphragm had been growing and preparing for this task.  When the synapses in my infant brain were told that mother was no longer available, my respiratory system was activated to reach for air.  

I could spend the next few hours or days trying to wrap my head around the  science of childbirth, but since I didn’t remember my own birth and since I didn’t experience it myself as a mother, it’s not that big of an interest to me.  I was born, I continued to exist because of air and because I could breathe.  So it is breath that now grabs my attention.  It becomes a companion in my journey of life.  It has it’s energy and it’s own strength.  It wants to be a  loyal friend, but I need to give it its space to do its job.  If I try to hold it, it doesn’t want to help me.  If I find myself in a place where it can’t reach me,  it won’t be there for long.  It needs me as much as I need it.  

For me at this time of my life, understanding the science behind something can be interesting for a while, it just doesn’t hold my interest for too long.  I want to have an additional narrative to embrace so the value is maintained long term.  Call it my imagination, but it works for me.  I really don’t need to know the molecular details as much as I feel the need to embrace the story and it’s value in my life.  Maybe it gives me common ground with those whose narrative is all they need.  I still can’t see this world as all science or all story.  I continue to hope that one day we can find a balance that isn’t going to destroy each other in the process.  

WATER - "WASSER"

 

I just finished reading the “Dirty Snowballs and Space Rocks” chapter in Dan Levitt’s Book “What’s Gotten Into You”.  It’s all about where the water on earth came from.  It’s fascinating and brain busting to go through the process of discoveries that scientists have made over the years, decades and centuries.  I am amazed at the persistence that people have to uncover the story of this cosmic space traveller we call Earth.  Most of us are content to go to work, eat, sleep and play a bit, but there are those who really want to know where the oceans came from.  

The word “water” in German is “Wasser”.  It is the word I use when I see a body of water that I wish I could play in.  I was two months old when I went on my first canoe trip with my family.  Water has never been something I’ve been scared of, because I was introduced to it at such a young age.  I remember one of our trips with the sailboat on our family Florida trip in 1985.  Dad brought the boat out on the ocean.  I climbed over the side and decided to swim in the ocean for a bit while the family just stayed in the boat.  For me, that was the farthest out in the ocean I had been.  It wasn’t until after I climbed back in the boat, and maybe back to land, that I thought of what other critters could be sharing the same space with me in that very ocean.. sharks and stingrays came to mind.  However in that moment, I just wanted to be surrounded by the ocean water and it felt better than staying in the boat.  

I adore rivers.  They are the picture of life for me.  A river is never the same.  It is a constant movement.  It is water on a journey.  When I lived on the Colpitts Dairy Ranch by Calgary, the Elbow river was a favourite place to go swimming.  I remember often going in and letting the water carry me, if only for a few metres.  It was mesmerizing to just abandon myself to the flow.  

Water time for me now mostly consists of early morning or evening dips in our hot tub on the deck.  I often find myself staying warm as I stargaze and spend time with my far away friends.  It’s not the same as swimming in the ocean or in a river, but it is sufficient to give me my connection to the elements that I’m told were around 13.8 billion years ago.  Scientists tell me that Hydrogen is traced back to the Big Bang.  I like that narrative.  I like that part of me and those things that are part of my world have spanned the course of time and existence.  It makes me feel connected to life itself. I feel less lonely in this world.  Maybe that is what embracing a narrative is all about.  Maybe we all want to feel less lonely.  I can’t find fault with that reasoning.  

 

MOON: HER NAME IS LUNA

Moon: The earth's satellite; shining by light reflected from the sun and revolving around the earth in the period of a lunar month. 

How do I describe something what has been like a friend for over five decades of my life.  Friends aren't always visible, but they seem to show up when one needs them.  That is the moon for me.  

The Moon has a name: Luna.  I like that better.  It's better than just being referred to as 'the moon'.  Luna is our closest cosmic presence.  It's a whopping 384,400 km from earth on average.  To put that in perspective, that would equate to just over nine and a half trips around the earth if you were circumnavigating at the equator.  That is a bit of a hike.  

I tried educating myself this morning on what it took for Earth's astronauts to get to the moon.  The process was quite the ordeal.  I listened to Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke explain some of that process.  

I was sixteen months old when the first space boots touched moon ground.  It's a story that has been with me for most of my life.  I personally have no problem accepting it as an historical event, but there are a lot of people that don't.  The "Moon landing is a Fake" camp has a significant amount of campers.  I just don't find it necessary for me to be one of them.  I guess it's one more thing that I get to believe it without the personal evidence.  

I don't think I have a sufficient reason to debate the facts.  It's not a hill for me to die on.  I like how Neil Degrasse Tyson puts it.  In so many words he stated that it would be easier to land on the moon than it would be to fake the landing.  So why not just land on the moon.  Neil Degrasse Tyson has seen the evidence.  Charlie Duke has been to the moon.  So I will let them tell their story and I will listen.    I have no need to tell Charlie Duke that his experience was an illusion.  I don't like that when others tell me that my experiences have been illusions.  I like to be validated when I tell my story.  It is the only gift I can give someone.  Especially if I don't have any ground to stand on to say otherwise.  

In the last few weeks, I have enjoyed capturing images of the moon with my iPhone.  They aren't sharp by any means.  The iPhone doesn't take great pictures of the moon or the stars.  Maybe one day I will be able to look through a telescope and see the moon in more detail.  It is on my bucket list.  But until then, I will just keep an naked eye out for my friend that comes to visit on occasion.  

STARS: SEEING THE PAST

I wish I had had a love affair with the stars when I was a teenager.  At least I wished that last night when I found myself on the football field of my old high school with some former schoolmates and we were looking up at the stars and being amazed at what they were.  

Webster’s definition of star is…  (at least that which I was admiring last night) 

“One of the distant luminous heavenly bodies appearing to be of small size as compared with sun and moon.  A fixed heavenly body  contrasted with a planet. “ 

That’s it.  That is all Webster has to offer me in an astrophysics lesson on the cosmic geniuses I see in the night sky.  There is no explanation as to what those “heavenly bodies” are made of, their properties, their character, their position.  All Webster offered was that they were not the moon, sun or planets.  

Last night, as I was gathered to watch the fireworks on the football field.  I shared with them some cosmic data that I found interesting and had recently shared in an email to one of my nephews. 

“I like the stars.  I like stargazing.  I’ve never looked into the lens of a telescope in my life, but I still like watching and wondering.  There are three main star groupings (asterisms) that I see from my deck and porch that I recognize.  There distance is what amazes me.  

The Big Dipper (in Ursa Major Constellation)  is about 80 light years from Earth, Orion is 1350 light years away.  Cassiopia is 11,000 light years from Earth.   And I see them all in the same visible canvas of the night sky.  How crazy is that?”  

What one of my former schoolmates said in response sunk into me as highly significant.  

“We are seeing the past.” 

I can’t begin to explain or understand how someone figured that Cassiopeia is 11,000 light years away from Earth.  When I look at it, it looks like the same distance away as the Big Dipper, which is reported as only 80 light years from Earth.  To me and my naked eye, they are as Timon observed in “The Lion King”, “fireflies that got stuck up on the big bluish black thing.”.   But I can still be amazed at the possibility that someone smarter than has more access to instruments that provide that kind of data.  

Eleven thousand years is a lot of time.  Some people don’t even believe the earth is that old.  Will the data mean anything to them?  I don’t know.  But last night, I didn’t hear any dismissals, only amazement alongside.  That was precious.  

This weekend I have been hanging out at my old school feeling like I have to hide most of who I am.  That doesn’t feel that great, but I have adapted.  However last night, it felt like we had all submitted ourselves to the science and what that had to offer us in the moment.  

The part of the narrative that I like the most comes from Carl Sagan.  

"We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself." Carl Sagan 

I now see the stars as my ancestors.  I look up at them like I used to look up at my grandparents when I was a child.  I look at them like I look at the genealogy of my family.  Somehow, Some long time ago, I came from them and one day, when I stop breathing,  my atoms will start the journey back to the stars.  

Back to the Lion King… as Timon, Pumba and Simba lay underneath the stars, Simba recollected what his father Mufasa told him about the stars and about their ancestors…

“ Look at the stars. The great kings of the past look down on us from those stars. Whenever you feel alone, just remember that those kings will always be there to guide you.” 

Now as I look at the stars, I can see my ancestors, family and friends as having returned to the stars.  So no longer are they far away from me, but as close as the vision of the “fireflies on the big bluish black thing”.  

PLASTIC CANVAS ARTWORK BY RUBY NEUMANN

 

YEAR... WHAT IT REALLY MEANS

(September 29) Today is my Halfy Birthday. (I am six months past my official birthday)  As I start writing this, I am at my Mom's farm in Round Hill.  I got a chance to peek outside to see the stars, but the cloud cover has hidden most of them.  I was still able to see Orion and a crescent moon.   That is one of my biggest joys of overnighting at the farm.  The light polution is at a minimum here and I can see so much more of the galaxy that I can at home in Calmar.  

I want to take a detour from earth's elements and talk about time.  What does it mean to me that six months has past since I turned fifty-six.  I am six months away from fifty-seven... a birthday I'm not looking forward to.  Fifty-seven was the age my sister had reached when she died last summer.  I never imagined passing her... and that is likely to happen next year, although still over a year away.  

What is a year?  Technically a year is the time it takes for the earth to circumnavigate the sun.  It is the journey of nine hundred and forty million kilometers every year.  I personally don't feel that.   It is the wonder of living on a ball in space that is big enough to give me the security of not feeling just how fast I am moving through space.   Here's a little Google harvested factoid....

"Earth orbits around the Sun at a speed of about 67,000 miles per hour (107,000 km/hr or nearly 30 km/s). At the same time, Earth spins on its axis at about 1,000 miles per hour (460 m/s or 1,600 km/hr)."

I'm dizzy just thinking about that.  Let me reiterate that I personally have no evidence for that data.  I'm not the one with the calculator and the stopwatch timing the planet on it's journey through space.  I find the possibility amazing, and that is good enough for me.  

In one year I gain another number on my age identifier, and to earn that all I have to do is travel nine hundred and forty million kilometers at a speed of thirty kilometers per second.