it really looks like this...

When I saw the Milky Way, it looked exactly the same! *swoon*


And OOO! I found a beautiful poem! It's written by a governing member of the Adler Planetarium in Chicaga. I couldn't help but notice its relevance to the quote "We are a way for the Universe to know itself." More importantly, I couldn't help but notice the awe I felt as I read it, because it exactly sums up how I feel every time I look at the stars, or dream of them, or fly around in my purple spacejet surrounded by them. What can I say? I live vicariously through outer space. *oops* Not to mention, if I could think of a favorite mythical being (I know I love dragons by the Ananda Proxy), it would be the Phoenix. Alas, I'll save that discussion for another day, when I don't have an exam.

So relax, look up at the stars in your mind (because I know it's bitter cold outside), and enjoy. :)

Stargazer

Beneath the first of three stars in a row,
where lie the remnants of giants long dead,
I caught the light of a nebulous glow--
A glow that gave rise to an equine head.
So grand it seems that from this cosmic pair
of stellar nursery and stellar grave,
worlds will emerge, lit by a new star’s glare--
Phoenixes reborn from the lives they gave.
I pondered this cloud with great persistence
and found a glimmer of an answer long sought
to the question of our own existence.
By travel-weary photons I’ve been taught
that the cosmos created eyes in me
so it can gaze and have itself to see.

~Eric Francis Diaz

Copyright © 2001 Eric F. Diaz