Stargazing Guy

― Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 1 (http://www.literaturepage.com/read/mobydick-16.html)

“For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance. This appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival. Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game — none of them lasts forever. It is beyond our powers to predict the future. Catastrophic events have a way of sneaking up on us, of catching us unaware. Your own life, or your band’s, or even your species’ might be owed to a restless few — drawn, by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new worlds. Herman Melville, in Moby Dick, spoke for wanderers in all epochs and meridians: ‘I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas . .”

Carl Sagan in Pale Blue Dot

“There are few quotes that fill me with such a mix of hope and awe as those roughly 160 words by Carl Sagan. The quote comes from his 1994 book, “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space.” It is the eponymous name of one of the most thought-provoking images (https://www.christopherroosen.com/blog/2020/6/22/pale-blue-dot) in all of modern astronomy, the view of Earth, not as a globe, but a lonely tiny pixel, against the vastness of space. For me, the quote speaks for all exploration, both external in new landscapes and domains, but perhaps even internal, through new worlds of mind and idea.

The quote, by itself is one of the most powerful I know.

But in 2014, it gained even greater meaning, thanks to the work of artist Erik Wernquist, with his 3 minute and 50 second short-film, Wanderers:

In it, Wernquist paints a picture of how humans could explore our solar system, accompanied by Carl Sagan’s melodic narration. His voice-over extracted from a speech where he spoke those oh-so- brief words about exploration.”

Credit: https://www.christopherroosen.com/blog/2023/5/15/carl-sagan-wanderers

Stargazing Guy couldn’t have said it better – the pull of ‘just over the horizon’ the need to ‘go west’ and where that will take us next.

Remember, hope lives here

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PS: I love coffee. BuyMeACoffee, leave a message with a date and time and we can share it, remotely, at the same time, and think about the Cosmos.

In the meantime, take care of yourself and if you can, someone else, too, because as Adam Smith said, “we naturally desire not only to be loved but to be lovely”.

Remember, hope lives here.

Opening image credit: unknown

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