the universe will not be controlled by the likes of us
the title is a brilliant phrase uttered on the intertubes by AdamSelene @ theoildrum.com. this space accumulates other such short, poetic, and found-elsewhere insights into the limits of human cognition. it is a project dedicated to Wes Jackson’s vision of an “ignorance-based worldview.” a brilliant phrase uttered by his friend Wendell Barry in a letter.Archive for sunlight
the sun has stopped setting
…we think. we went on a walk from 11:30 – 1:30 last night, and the sun was setting the whole time, and wouldn’t disappear below the horizon, and probably wouldn’t.
seeing the earthrise during the apollo 8 mission changed the astronauts’ lives (and everyone else who saw the photograph; that is, everybody); it was an ecstatic religious experience to see our planet from a wholly new vantage point, to see its situation in the cosmos, rather than as merely the backdrop, or horizon, or stage, for our ordinary activities (usually, the earth, to us, is not a planet, just as usually, to us, a window pane has no color.)
being in iceland is like that. the sun is somewhere else; its journey across the sky changes every day; its motions are not what we expect, nor can we tell what it’s up to. what it’s teaching me is that earth is a planet; i am becoming aware of where i am on the surface of that planet, in thinking of where we are in relation to the ever-changing sun.
this is what the sunlight in iceland is like, i think:
Nostalgia of the Infinite (Giorgio de Chirico, 1911)
i saw ravens playing
in Iceland, the sun always seems to be in the wrong place. remember the last time you saw a solar eclipse, and everywhere you looked, not just at the sun and the moon, but the whole earth, the light seemed utterly strange, but beautiful? that’s how it seems to me every day here, when the sun is out. especially this past sunday. it was a stark blue, twilight day, and very windy. i went to the edge of steep slope that overlooks the airport, in the hopes filming a crosswind landing. what i didn’t know is that this is what i would see instead (if the embedded video doesn’t work below, here’s the youtube link).
