(no subject)
Mostly I feel like a hitherto well-trained dog who suddenly wonders why they're jumping through hoops anymore. You are well, I am well, what else can I say about first days and last days? I am reduced to non-descript diplomatic sentences, spending entire weeks in which I do not speak with a single soul, but travel to and fro reading Virginia Woolf novels and essays on Pissarro. Things seem true, but sometimes they only seem that way, it doesn't matter if I want to know the curve of you, it doesn't matter if I think about your hands on me when I am catching a ride home from work.
Something to live by, part one-
I remember learning about trigonometric parallax in high school physics, it's the apparent shift of a close object against a distant background, due to a change in the position of the observer. Trigonometric parallax is used to find the distance to nearby stars which are within a few hundred light years. By observing a nearby star against the background of more distant stars, (on two separate occasions when when the earth is at opposite ends of the orbital cycle), you can use trigonometry to calculate the distance in parsecs. However, I also remember learning that it cannot be applied to stars that are very far away, because as the distance to the star increases it becomes proportionally difficult to calculate the answer within an acceptable margin or error, the parallax becomes smaller and smaller until it becomes negligible, the angle becomes too small to detect.
There has been an apparent shift, my position has changed, maybe I am forever trying to calculate while you are forever moving (Or is it I who is moving? The theory of relativity tells us that it's impossible to know). Or maybe you're not a star at all, but a comet (in which case the whole equation is useless). Or maybe you're a star who is too far away? All I know is that I can feel all the rest of my life stretching out ahead of me like a highway when you come up over a hill. And either your headlights are darkening up ahead, or my heart is shifting seasons, either way I'm making all the necessary preparations and you are not troubling yourself to come a little closer and stop me from driving on. David says that all our calculations must be guided by acceptable margins of error and even trigonometry has no way of reaching outlying stars. We can only keep our park lights on so long before the battery runs flat beneath us.
Something to live by, part two-
The gravitational force between two masses is inversely proportional to the distance between them, which means that as the distance between two masses increases, the force of gravity between them decreases. I can't stop thinking about that, and what it means for you and I.
Something to live by, part one-
I remember learning about trigonometric parallax in high school physics, it's the apparent shift of a close object against a distant background, due to a change in the position of the observer. Trigonometric parallax is used to find the distance to nearby stars which are within a few hundred light years. By observing a nearby star against the background of more distant stars, (on two separate occasions when when the earth is at opposite ends of the orbital cycle), you can use trigonometry to calculate the distance in parsecs. However, I also remember learning that it cannot be applied to stars that are very far away, because as the distance to the star increases it becomes proportionally difficult to calculate the answer within an acceptable margin or error, the parallax becomes smaller and smaller until it becomes negligible, the angle becomes too small to detect.
There has been an apparent shift, my position has changed, maybe I am forever trying to calculate while you are forever moving (Or is it I who is moving? The theory of relativity tells us that it's impossible to know). Or maybe you're not a star at all, but a comet (in which case the whole equation is useless). Or maybe you're a star who is too far away? All I know is that I can feel all the rest of my life stretching out ahead of me like a highway when you come up over a hill. And either your headlights are darkening up ahead, or my heart is shifting seasons, either way I'm making all the necessary preparations and you are not troubling yourself to come a little closer and stop me from driving on. David says that all our calculations must be guided by acceptable margins of error and even trigonometry has no way of reaching outlying stars. We can only keep our park lights on so long before the battery runs flat beneath us.
Something to live by, part two-
The gravitational force between two masses is inversely proportional to the distance between them, which means that as the distance between two masses increases, the force of gravity between them decreases. I can't stop thinking about that, and what it means for you and I.