In June I went to see the new Star Trek movie.  When I left the movie theater I went to a roof party in Williamsburg as a thunderstorm was ending.  The sky opened up in all sorts of brilliant colors with terrifying mammatus clouds forming overhead.  The city skyline was cast in shadows as the sun was setting just past the line of clouds.  With those clouds overhead, lightning to the east and the sun to the west there was a real otherworldly sense to the evening – the clouds seemed so unusual and beautiful and the city looked so massive and metallic.  It felt like I could have been on some alien planet but it was just Earth, our beautiful turbulent little pod in the vacuum of space.

Since that day – I’ve been thinking a lot about space, both as a near fictional place where I can project my dreams for myself and humankind but also as the very real wasteland that is at once fantastic radiant gold and cold, dark and airless.  There have been numerous things to keep my interest peeked – the anniversary of the moon landings, the solar eclipse in Asia and a lunar eclipse, the discovery of a comet impact on Jupiter’s surface and the launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour.  I have space fever.
Much of this fascination is in part nostalgia.  When I was a child space was a constant source of amazement.  I was obsessed with aviation and spaceflight.  I had a mini-planetarium in my room and I loved reading about the space shuttles.  I am sort of reclaiming that wonder but now with the perspective of an adult.  I can sit down and seriously read about the heavens and have a chance at comprehending the vastness and strangeness.  The most strange thing to realize is that WE ARE IN SPACE! Earth is a small point within space and we are not at the center of space.  Reality is infinite and humanity is on some random (if awesome) planet.  It’s very exciting to think about.

I have a copy of the National Audobon Society’s Field Guide to the Night Sky. I’ve moved this book from apartment to apartment and always thought it was a useless task.  Reading it now makes me yearn for an unpolluted night sky to be able to gaze out at the stars.  I was thinking how strange it is to be in this position unable to see the stars.  Our ancestors couldn’t avoid them and often needed them as a means of navigation and of discerning the passing of months and the seasons.  Hopefully our ancestors will be out amongst them.  But we’re in this middle ground, too modern to see stars like our ancestors did and too primitive to really know them.
So I read read read my maps and try to figure out this night sky that I can’t see and pray to whatever’s out that that we make it out there. Our future lies up there in that vault above us – there’s just too much to do and explore up there for us to stay put forever.

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