A look on night Earth
It was a clear sunset today. Very beautiful.
Many people are moved by the full moon. But I think the crescent moon draws another kind of wonder from me.
I can always see the whole circle of the moon, its shadow and its light side, when looking at the crescent moon in the sunset. It reminds me that the moon is under the light of the sun, and that it casts a shadow on the nothingness of space.
The crescent moon, like nothing else, reminds me that the moon is but a giant stone in space. But when you think about it, it is a wonderful thing - more wonderful than rabbits, or cheese, or kingdoms of lunar goddesses. A flying giant rock, that actually exists. Two giant rocks, the earth and the moon, floading around each other in space. It brings to my mind the images of floating continents, images which we regard as nothing but scenarios of fantasy.
A real fantasy.
Then I look at the sky without clouds, and I realize how big it is. Why don’t I fall upwards towards the sky? Forever and ever and ever. If you free yourself from the prejudices that are built in your brain, and inside your ears, you’ll realize that up and down are equal directions, and the fact that we’re stuck to the ground should be no less fantastic than if we were falling into the nothingness that we call the sky.
I close my eyes, and I picture the solar system in my mind. Such a meaningless thing, this bunch of rocks that was composed by the aggregration of floating material. Yet hidden in a small corner of one of those rocks is my entire life, which passes as the blink of a cosmic eye. Then I wonder what lives pass at the blink of my eye inside myself at microscopic level.
This is not the first nor the last time that I stop to wonder at the world and the universe. But it was the first that I managed to hold onto these small cloudy fragments of my mind enough that I manage to write them here.
November 30th, 2006 at 10:56 am
muito legal o que escreveste… lembro bem uma vez que estava na praia, (acho que vcs ainda eram bem pequenos) e comecei a olhar as ondas na areia.E de repente me dei conta que aquele movimento do mar estava la centenas, talvez milhares de anos antes de mim, e ainda estaria lá por outro tanto, depois que eu me fosse. Quantas pessoas foram la como eu, crianças, adolescentes, maduros, velhos…. e depois os filhos e osfilhos dos filhos fizeram e fazem a mesma coisa?
nos achamos tao grandes, tao espertos, mas a natureza fica la, quieta, vendo a gente vir.. e ir :}
inspirador teu texto!