28th October

“The greatest mystery the universe offers is not life but Size. Size encompasses life, and the Tower encompasses Size. The child, who is most at home with wonder, says: Daddy, what is above the sky? And the father says: The darkness of space. The child: What is beyond space? The father: The galaxy. The child: Beyond the galaxy? The father: Another galaxy. The child: Beyond the other galaxies? The father: No one knows.” (Stephen King, The Gunslinger)

A less practical mind that a child may also be unable to imagine that the ground on which he sits really curves. That we can via the use of many technologies move from our sphere of existence and fly away into space to look down, is in itself a maddening fact. How could one from the clarity of space see our world, and the thousands of pinpricks of light in the universe and keep ones rational mind, when before you, infinity is present.

The answer is because we are stoic beings. Even the apotheosis of all philosophers, faced with that dim infinity of light would be simply unable to grasp the sheer size of everything. The adage is that we in our little solar system are to the universe as a speck of sand is to our world and even this is only conjecture. If indeed there is any kind of afterlife ahead I would wish for nothing other than a chance to walk at my own speed from one end of the galaxy to the other. An infinite task as it grows every day. Grows into what?