Solar and stellar
December 28th, 2023
There was a change made some time a long time ago in our collective unconsciousness. It was the change of focus from giving equal consideration to the sun and stars as focal points of mythology to only keeping the sun in symbolic understanding and forgetting about stars. Easily done since the sun is our constant companion and giver of life and saturation of colors and object of longing in winter. Stars were forgotten since living in the cities is not conducive to watching the skies at night, and it is usually difficult to do with all the pollution from industries and artificial lights, also being out at night can be dangerous or at least frowned upon. Stars were relegated to just names used in infantile astrology and horoscope making. Few still care about stars as their job in astronomy or astrophysics requires, but they only care about scientific notations of these stars.
Yet, there are moments when, by lucky accident, I am up when it’s still dark outside and the skies are clear and I look up and see hundreds of shimmering points up there. Maybe not hundreds, maybe a couple of dozens or so. The light pollution prevents me from seeing more, and a memory of how full of points of cold light the starry sky looked like when I was a child brings a quick pain of longing for something gone. I tell myself time and again that I will find a way to see more stars soon. All I have to do is wake up a couple of hours before my usual wake up and drive only 20–30 kilometers into the woods where there are no villages, no towns, no street lights, and no artificial sources of light to see the glory of the sky full of stars, maybe even with a Milky Way filling part of the sky. Really not much of an effort, but I never do. There isn’t enough time, or something else requires my full and uninterrupted sleep, or I am just tired… I tell that myself, promising that soon I will find a way. Maybe that is why we no longer care for stars, because of too much comfort and easy excuses for laziness. And avoidance of cold light as well.
