Star Struck

For as long as I can remember, I have been captivated by extra-terrestrial things. Stars, other planets, moons, galaxies…they all create a quiver in my heart and a tingle in my mind. I blame my mother totally for this. I couldn’t have been anymore than 4 when she told me that I was not her real daughter, that I was actually from Jupiter and her real child had been traded for me.
Mind you, normally this would have been something rather traumatic to tell a young child, but for some odd reason I was never distressed by the fact that I was NOT her ‘real’ child, but I was more pleased and thrilled by the fact that I was from Jupiter. AS I have gotten older, I have developed even MORE of an attraction to ‘up there’. I wanted to be an astronaut, but my eyes were far too bad for me ever to get up there. So I have settled for staring at the stars from afar…greeting the moon whenever I can see her clearly, knowing constellations and satellites like the names of my friends.
None of this has eased my fascination with the stars in the least. I can look at a picture and feel a thrill of wonder and amazement…a feeling of awe that almost brings tears to my eyes…just from seeing a blurry image of a nebula, or the crisp image of another planet. And Jupiter! Oh my… it fascinates me…the delicate appearance of the monster of our Solar System. So huge that it could contain hundreds of Earths, a gravitational pull that is less than the sun, but not my very much…and almost completely unknown, covered in a layer of gas that conceals all of it’s secrets. *sighs* My…I can’t think of a single word… it’s fascination, mixed with awe and an intense sense of wonder with the night sky is one of the major reasons that I want a car with a sun roof. I want to be able to drive deep deep into the country…or through the desert maybe, and then stop and lean back my seat and just stare at the stars until I feel like I am going to burst with their beauty.
How can anyone be nonchalant about the night sky? How can you NOT feel like a tiny part of an huge and wonderful universe when you look up and see stars? How can anyone presume to be the only intelligent beings in the Universe when the realization hits that there is a galaxy whose light we are seeing is over 2 million years old… that what we see may be GONE by the time it’s light reaches us? I suppose this is something that I am passively passionate about. *sighs* I hate living in the city sometimes…when you look up and all you can see is one or two stars…and they are rather faint. *snickers* I wish for blackout sometimes…just so that people can SEE what is up there. It looks so peaceful, but in truth is amazingly violent and changing.

Those are the Pleiades. The Seven Sisters. Such beauty there is in the night sky. There are hundreds of gorgeous pictures to see... if you are into that kinda thing. :)

Stay Jazzed

P.S. LOGICALLY... I know I'm NOT from Jupiter...emotionally...I'm still up in the air (pun not intended) about that.