I really miss home today

What if I never get to call those rusty beaches with reflections of factories and cranes my home again?

Provence [v]

Occitania

Kosmos

Wired:

'But there is another side to the psychology of spaceflight. During their stay in space, astronauts have reported what author Frank White called the “overview effect” – they became filled with a sense of wonder and awe about the universe, and experienced spiritual epiphanies such as unity with nature, transcendence, and universal brotherhood. Space affords some incredible experiences. NASA psychologists have looked into the benefits of taking photographs from the International Space Station, which may have a salutary effect on the minds of astronauts (.pdf).

These positive effects seem to last. Psychologists studying astronauts who return to Earth report that they are less anxious, hypochondriacal, depressive, or aggressive. It seems that, during their stay in a tough environment, people are able to develop coping skills to deal with the challenge and stress, which they get to take with them back to Earth.'

I was born into unseen catastrophes and unseen discoveries. Perhaps I have space running in my veins. Perhaps I was born 3.7 miles from the  S U N.

In 1990:

• The Space Shuttle Discovery places the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit revolutionizing astronomy;
• Tim Berners-Lee publishes a more formal proposal for the World Wide Web and the first web page is written;
• The First Known Case of AIDS is traced back to 1959;
• The Space Probe Voyager launched in 1977 photographed the Solar System at a distance of 3.7 miles from the SUN;
• 18 years after its launch the US Space Probe Pioneer reaches a distance of 46.5 billion miles beyond all planetary orbits;
• Depletion of the Ozone Layer is discovered above the North Pole. 

[Client Mansell - Memories (Someone We'll Never Know)]


'Isn't this enough?

Just this world?

Just this beautiful, complex,
wonderfully unfathomable NATURAL world?'

'I am a tiny, insignificant, ignorant lump of carbon.
I have one life, and it is short
and unimportant…,
but thanks to recent scientific advances
I get to live twice as long
as my great great great great uncleses and auntses.
Twice as long to live this life of mine.
Twice as long to love this wife of mine.
Twice as many years of friends and wine.'

[Tim Minchin - Storm]

I want to shout and murder. 

'It takes a lot of nerve to destroy this wondrous earth.
We're only human; this at least we've learned.' 

[Bowerbirds]

Instead, I want to be filled with a sense of wonder. I want to be filled with all of this   s  p  a  c  e

We are stardust. I  W O U L D  N E V E R  D R E A D  D E A T H  I F  I  B E C A M E  O N E   W I T H  K O S M O S

The worlds end in London

[Low - Sunflower]

'In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river...

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.'

[T. S. Eliot]

The radiation will come for all of us.

Beginners [v]

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand." 

[- The Velveteen Rabbit]

  

Hal: 'Well, let's say that since you were little, you always dreamed of getting a lion. And you wait, and you wait, and you wait, and you wait, but the lion doesn't come. And along comes a giraffe. You can be alone, or you can be with the giraffe.' 

Oliver: 'I'd wait for the lion.' 

Hal: 'That's why I worry about you.'

[Fleet Foxes - Your Protector]