Stars, novas and fireworks

(ok, so I actually wrote this a week ago, and meant to start my blog at that point, but I got busy. Being unemployed is a 24-7 job)

“That's the whole problem with science. You've got a bunch of empiricists trying to describe things of unimaginable wonder.” - Calvin / Bill Watterson

I just finished reading about our Milky way, and its 'satellite' galaxies (satellite galaxies being my term – the more technical expression would be the dwarf galaxies, large and small Magellanic clouds, and globular clusters that are held by its gravitational pull.) The site I read said that a globular cluster of stars had a mere 100,000 member stars. A mere 100,000 stars I think to myself? Then I look up the number of stars in the Milky Way, and find that it boasts somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 billion stars. Sigh. 100,000 just ain't what it used to be.

In a somewhat related story, I read today of a new nova that has just appeared in the sky, in the constellation of the scorpion. A nova is the result of a thermonuclear explosion, a fusion process whereby atoms are mashed together to form new elements in unfathomably high temperatures. Or, fathomable now, if you take the scientific view of things, which years ago I would have. Now I think of the explosion itself, and am struck with awe at the amazingly colorful and powerful phenomena running loose in our galaxy. What a colorful term, thermonuclear explosion (if, that is, one divorces it of any association with our nuclear weapons, which would give it a rather negative connotation). The scientific viewpoint of the whole thing is that the fireworks are a side show, a small and irrelevant emotional side effect of a rational, physical process. A process that can be described with equations and quantified with numbers. Well. Ok then, that's fine. But I'm no longer riding on that merry go round, as Mr. Lennon would say. I just had to let it go. I think the scientist is missing out on a wonderful fireworks show.

Oh, and by the way – Calvin would have named the big bang “The horrendous space kablooie”

-jbh

Why blog?

As my first post, I'd like to try to answer the question, why am I blogging? I think any honest writer must at least address that question at some point in their creations, and as a first time blogger I'll do the same. On the surface one might say they blog to say something about their world, themselves, politics, music, and other topics, and to have a 'dialog' of sorts with others. Ok then, I plan to write about things that interest me in the world, but mainly they will revolve around science, ideas/philosophy, spirituality, and writing itself. So, the superficial reason taken care of, what are the deeper reasons?

The next answer that comes to mind is because I feel a need to write, because it's part of who I am, almost because I have to. Is that all of it? No, one also suspects ego, that great driver of so much that we do in our lives – thus, I want to be read, to be noticed, and to be appreciated. But this answer falls short as well. A week ago I read an essay by the Zen priest Norman Fischer, published in the Shambhala Sun. He related the following:

“Years ago I went to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and did what all tourists do: wrote some words on a scrap of paper that I tucked into a crevice in the wall. When I closed my eyes and touched my head to the warm stone, it came to me: 'All language is prayer.' This must be so. Who is it we are speaking to when we speak to anyone? To that person, and also past him or her to Out There. If there is language, it means there is the possibility of being heard, being met, being loved. And reaching out to be heard, met, or loved is a holy act. Language is holy.”

My personal religion, and thus the sense in which I see that word 'holy', will be a bit different from Fischer's, but in general I agree with him – language is holy.

And finally, when I think about writing, I am reminded of the grace and beauty that puts my mind (and dare I say soul?) at peace when I finish a well wrought piece. Now, my view on things is that there is no single reason for any of our actions, and so the reasons above are all valid, and all parts of why I write. Or, rather, they are the reasons why I will attempt to maintain this blog. So that's why I feel I'm writing... you might ask yourself why you're reading ;)