How Do I Love Thee

Home is behind
The world ahead
And there are many paths to tread
Through shadow
To the edge of night
Until the stars are all aligned
Mist and shadow
Cloud and shame
All shall fade
All shall fade

If my memory serves me correctly, this is, word for word, Pippin's song in one of the 'Lord of the Rings' movies, and it was based on a poem in the book.  A very hauntingly beautiful piece.  I sang this two or three times, softly to myself during campfire last night.

A star slept

The sky rests

Flickering candles lit

One wink

A blink

Heavenly emit

Stars are

Stars were

Stars ever

Traveling

Endlessly

Timelessly

Centuries past

Queries asked

Finding way back home

Always same

Never change

And we still have far to go

Last night, after campfire, my father and I stayed outside and watched as the sky steadily littered itself with stars.  Truly beautiful, I remember thinking, and "no wonder we want to be out there".  Centuries ago, no one could possibly understand what the heavens were.  Now, we know it is a whole other world out there.  One that hasn't been explored, one that we don't understand.

"Space: the final frontier.  ....To boldly go where no man has gone before."

Beyond

The rim of the star-light

My love

Is wand'ring in star-flight

I know

He'll find in star-clustered reaches

Love,

Strange love a star woman teaches

I know

His journey ends never

His star trek

Will go on forever

But tell him

While he wanders his starry sea

Remember, remember me

Those stars, and all the planets and moons for that matter, in our galaxy, are all going in the same direction at apparently the same speed, so that centuries after the first constellation was named, we can still effectively navigate by them and recognize the original patterns from so long ago.  Space holds so many mysteries.  Mysteries, which are so far beyond us, far beyond anything we've tried to discover before.  We had never before left our planet.  For an unknown number of years, man has always been Earth-bound.  Then, in the late twentieth-century AD, we touched the moon.

I find it fascinating how far we came in the twentieth century, and how much we seem to have slowed down since then.  But perhaps that is because I am looking back at the quick evolution of cars to suddenly a space ship, and now I'm seeing almost complete uniformity in automobiles, phones, and other gadgets and I am distinctly unimpressed.  I highly recommend going to a brass-age car museum and learning about the individual creativity that was going on in that era.  While it could be argued that many of those vehicles, while each unique in their own right, look very similar to each other, the point I'm trying to make is that we do not seem to have come very far in some areas.  Everyone wants to be faster, sleeker, more powerful, more like what everyone else offers so they can compete, but I see little individuality.

But now I've left space completely, haven't I?  And we're breaking camp today - my presence is needed elsewhere.

The road goes ever on and on,

Meggy