28. August 2019 – Text original by Diana; Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
The sweet aroma of the watermelon that I just ate still fills my senses. Summer and watermelon with its unmistakable scent. The savour and coolness that spreads through my body when the lumps of watermelon melt in my mouth … induce an ecstatic joy.
But watermelon is only part of the joy of summer evenings. The satisfaction can only be complete when I am offered the reason for contemplating the starry sky.
It’s late at night, and it’s already dark. Happy with the watermelon that cooled my being on this hot day, I went out into the garden and looked up at the sky. Pitch-Dark heaven, as only in the countryside you still can find, full of stars. The evening air hangs thickly under the seductive, heavy scent of the queen of the night and the moonflower that grows strewed in the garden.
I lay on the soft grass, facing the sky with my arms in the shape of a cross, mirroring the constellation that floats above my head. The Swan. The grass tickled my palms and soles, and her coolness gave me a comforting sensation. Only the crickets disturbed the quietness of the night, and from time to time, the barking of a dog.
In this very moment, you would say: “And then I closed my eyes and …”. No, I didn’t shut them. I opened them wide instead, trying to capture at a glance the full expanse of the universe.
***
Sky and stars. The dream I carry with me from my childhood. In the summer the midnight often caught me peering the heavens. Set on the hot cement in front of the house, with my friends Mela and Vio, looking up at the sky, philosophising, trying with our minds of children to understand the endlessness. I dreamed of being an astronomer. It remained just that, a dream. And maybe it’s better so. Perhaps mathematics and geometry with its calculations, graphs and statistics would have destroyed the mystery and the charm of the starry night. At least I wasn’t left alone in this. I managed somehow to pass this passion to my son, who is joining me now often in the clear nights, to gaze to the sky.
Since then, I kept my eyes peering the depths of the sky. I was looking at stars, trying to imagine what they would look like from nearby. Some of them are white, some blue or red. Some small, much smaller than the sun, and some gigantic, besides them our sun seems just a little dot. How far are they? Vega, the luminous star that floats now right above my head sent its light that reaches ma now some 25 years ago. Deneb, another star, located in the constellation Lebada, not far from Vega, displays its almost 1600 years old glow. It’s the farthest star you can see with the naked eye. With a little effort and with the peripheral look you can see on a dark sky, the Andromeda galaxy, a foggy ball, whose light has turned on us … 2.5 million years ago, when humans probably didn’t even exist. With a real or imaginary spyglass, you can enter even deeper into the wombs of the universe. However, the human mind is too small for understanding the huge dimensions of the macrocosm of the small ones of the microcosm.
***
In this summer night dream, I felt the connection with the Earth is dissipating. I was detaching myself, and I began to rise slowly upwards. Light as a snowflake, as my body was remaining down there in the grass. I was only the eyes. I could see myself down there looking at the sky, the stars and myself, floating smoothly and rising higher and higher. I could see the house, then the village, the fields surrounded by a yellowish and smoothish moonlight recently rose above the horizon.
Then the whole land was shown to me, and when I got even higher, I could see the imaginary line on the Earth surface separating day from the night. What a view! Breathless. The atmosphere that contains that seep of air without which we cannot be alive … that fine blue line? It’s amazing how thin it is, and yet supports all life on Earth!
Then I moved further away, and the Earth became a small and fragile blue ball, spotted with white clouds. A jewel lost in the vastness of space and time. I was flying by Mars, then Jupiter. From here, the Earth resembles a little star. I was moving faster and faster as I exited the solar system, which was becoming smaller and smaller until it disappeared.
I just passed by stars, nebulae, galaxies, clusters of galaxies reaching close to the edge of the universe if it has one. There, is nothing about humans, Earth or Sun or any known planets. Not even stars or galaxies could be seen. Everything is like a canvas, a tangle, a network of purple light filaments, synaptic neural connections, neurons. Is this the brain of the Creator, the mind of God?
I remained there for a while, enjoying that place where I had the glimpse of God. It was the supreme peace, a place where all the small things of my life and in general, of any earthly life, mean really nothing. How great I felt inside me. But here, not only me but all the greatness, the pride of all people, the whole planet and the solar system are nothing. Seen from here, the people’s struggle for power, accumulation, and conquest is ridiculous. It’s like some atoms of a molecule in my body are struggling for supremacy. How pitiful! Happiness and contentment? These are to achieve only from the inside of my being. They are here deep inside, waiting for me to recognise them.
***
I closed my eyes for a moment. I saw the nothingness we come from and where one day we will return. Reopening my eyes, I took a look at the sky and stars again. I breathed deep in. The thick night air filled my lungs and gave me a feeling of fullness. Life is about nothing else but the experience. And the experience is everything that awakens the inner life. For that, it is not necessary to travel a long, long way, I don’t have to go over the nine sees and nine countries to reach it. Experience is here, with me, in me. It was and always will be. I just have to acknowledge it!
Hm, still what is beyond the universe? Beyond its limit?