Truly, as the crow flies, overhead, in the woods of Mendon Pond, on a late Sunday afternoon, where no other can be seen, and no other heard–not even the dry leaves clinging to their summer trees–it’s steady wings beat with patience at the fact that I am an ephemeral presence in it’s familial realm.
My friend Roxane asked me about some prints she was making, one reminded me of this video I had made at the Cobb’s Hill Reservoir with Aimee, circa 2006, so I dug it out and with the new computational power afforded from my new laptop, I could finally work it into something neat, check it out, it is only one minute long.
At the Reservoir from rudybang on Vimeo.
Sir William Herschel (circa 1700) is responsible for the misnomer of planetary nebula, those nebulous shells surrounding dying stars which have very little to do with planets–unless you consider the fact that the expunged material that comprises the planetary nebula provides the fuel and impetus for the subsequent generation of stars, their planets, and those planet’s potential inhabitants and lifeforms. He also, apparently, “lived in the ghetto and wanted to be a rapper like 50 cent or lil wayne or even M&M” according to the wikipedia entry as of now.
It’s on the internet, it must be true.
Also, he discovered infrared light, think about that, he discovered something that is otherwise invisible! And, “(h)e was a gooooddddddddd guy but he lacked a brain”, again, it is on the internet, it must be true.
mp3 sample from new DMST album
The tracklist:
If you could see and hear my head exploding.
(insert exploding sound here)
Preordered, now I just have to find a way to get sated faster.
I remember when I used to go birding all the time. A flash of a few colors and maybe a sound were enough for me to make a positive id. And others would bird around me because they knew my sight was the sharpest and my attention to the slightest movement second to none. And the active hunt for birds, like sliding down a steep and muddy hills, wading through marshes, lying in wait while bugs crawl all over my steadied hand. Now, I have difficulty determining some of the simplest birds on an afternoon walk.
There was a corresponding decline in my familiarity with the night sky. How many times has Sirius duped me into thinking it was Jupiter? Sirius, seriously.
Stars and birds. That was what I was all about for a significant portion of my early adulthood. I still recall receiving my first pair of binoculars on one Christmas eve, I think it was 1998. I ran out in my PJs, binoculars in hand, and gazed up at the cold night sky. Just thinking about it now, I can feel the crisp cold air on my bare cheeks, the midnight blue glow of the Texas night sky, the cold concrete making itself known to my thinly-socked feet.
I trained my new binoculars on the Orion Nebula, the Pleiades Star Cluster, and Saturn. A few years later, the very same binoculars would be trained upon Vermillion Flycatchers, Green Kingfishers, and Golden-Cheeked Warblers as I birded all about Texas. It was the best Christmas present I’d ever received. I often joked about how astronomy easily transitioned into birding because I was already looking up. Its more true than I realized.
I guess my binoculars are now comprised two X-ray satellite observatories floating somewhere out in space, the ones that I use extensively in my research, my X-ray eyes. But down here, on the Earth, so far removed from the act of observing, I feel a great detachment. I crave the active hunt, the whim of a new unscheduled pointing, the cold night air or the rare bird.
Instead, I only get pixels, lots and lots of pixels, and the interpretation of said pixels, interpretations into uncharted territory, that is, there are no clear-cut identifications to make, I am now responsible for the actual definition and classification. Advancement? Progress?