(no subject)
As me and my German school friends hurtled up the steps of Bi-Hall, pressing all the elevator buttons to get to the line faster than our friends inside, I felt like I was clambering through a window back into childhood, when I lined up for hours on end to gaze at spectacles in circuses.
Sliding up the staircase of the Observatory curled in the shape of DNA (or just curly fries), I am sucked through a time tunnel, drenched in the hazardous red light of time warp. I remember whispering to my friend (in German), ‘This feels just like the chamber where HAL lives, in 2001: A Space Odyssey!’
As you peer through the aperture, you don’t know whether you are looking through a telescope or a microscope. Saturn was so small - as if it was a cartoon on a fuzzy CRT television with a pet-moon on its hip. I feel like I was watching a scene from Georges Méliès A Trip to the Moon, except this time it is Saturn - a slight thumbprint in the sky, just barely there. Yet at the same time, you realize you are staring into the deep abyss of space. It is strange to feel in contact with something so absurdly distant. I couldn’t help but sympathize with Saturn - so isolated and far away! It must yearn along its orbit everyday, tallying the rotations of its moons (how many lightyears more?!) and hurrying to align itself to other planets for their timely rendezvous.
It most both love and hate the sun for holding the solar system together and yet binding it to this irrevocable and eternal rotation. At least it has its moons, it’s rings, and the sun’s illumination, unceasing through the seasons to accompany its endless toil.
My best friend Annie from Hong Kong goes to a school in a city. Sometimes she envies me for having the advantage of height, as our school is perched on a hill. Moments when you can stare into the far distance are indeed luxurious, but we have too much of that in Middlebury. Sometimes the walk from Proctor to the Library is too long and stark, and I yearn to resign my thoughts to the noise and chaos of ill-managed city planning.
Sliding up the staircase of the Observatory curled in the shape of DNA (or just curly fries), I am sucked through a time tunnel, drenched in the hazardous red light of time warp. I remember whispering to my friend (in German), ‘This feels just like the chamber where HAL lives, in 2001: A Space Odyssey!’
As you peer through the aperture, you don’t know whether you are looking through a telescope or a microscope. Saturn was so small - as if it was a cartoon on a fuzzy CRT television with a pet-moon on its hip. I feel like I was watching a scene from Georges Méliès A Trip to the Moon, except this time it is Saturn - a slight thumbprint in the sky, just barely there. Yet at the same time, you realize you are staring into the deep abyss of space. It is strange to feel in contact with something so absurdly distant. I couldn’t help but sympathize with Saturn - so isolated and far away! It must yearn along its orbit everyday, tallying the rotations of its moons (how many lightyears more?!) and hurrying to align itself to other planets for their timely rendezvous.
It most both love and hate the sun for holding the solar system together and yet binding it to this irrevocable and eternal rotation. At least it has its moons, it’s rings, and the sun’s illumination, unceasing through the seasons to accompany its endless toil.
My best friend Annie from Hong Kong goes to a school in a city. Sometimes she envies me for having the advantage of height, as our school is perched on a hill. Moments when you can stare into the far distance are indeed luxurious, but we have too much of that in Middlebury. Sometimes the walk from Proctor to the Library is too long and stark, and I yearn to resign my thoughts to the noise and chaos of ill-managed city planning.