Tonight, take a few minutes, pull back from the computer, find a window or a balcony and gaze upwards. The mistress of the hunt, Artemis or Diana will be hosting a visit from her father, Zeus or Dias or Jupiter. Here they are about to set, though I know night has not yet fallen for most of you. I see another bright planet a hand’s breadth behind them and I believe it to be Saturn or Kronos (old man Time).
I envy those of you who will have clear sky and I am sorry for all of you who live under perpetual smog. A year and a half ago when a friend of mine and I stayed up all night we caught the pre-dawn show of the century. All five of the classical planets were visible, including elusive Mercury and rare Saturn.
Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, sprinkled like jewels on the warm indigo of the pre-dawn sky. I don’t think I’d ever seen Mercury before and Saturn only once or twice and never with another planet. Our brother and sister and father planets, all at once. The fact that I knew the surface gravity and temperature of each, as well as their atmospheric composition and system history detracted not at all from the awe that I felt that morning.
more…
My father was introduced to the idea of raw romance (as opposed to silly candlelit dinners) by his mother who had been a nurse during the Balkan Wars. She had taken my then young and small father to the main train station and pointed at two signs. The one said “Orient Express, points East: Salonica, Constantinople, Aleppo, Jerusalem. The other said simply “Twelve horses or fifty men”. “Both are romantic,” she said. A few years later he was the only volunteer in his call-up.
Tonight, please look at the sky and you can think big
or
at least see where so many Islamic flags come from.
