“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C Clarke’s third law.
I stumbled on a little thing I had posted some time ago, early in September when friendships were still tentative and the air was still crisp. -We spent the weekend in a cabin four dirt trails off the everyday. At night we cracked open beers and harmonized to loud electronic dance music and jazz. At one point my gaze drifted a little upward and I realized we were completely outside the belly of Nashville light pollution. The sky danced with playful glitter. In a moment of personal triumph I was reminded why I loved the night sky so much I had pledged to study the science that governs it. Amidst the thumping music in a moment of serenity I found a sliver of purpose again. The night sky in Nashville is purple smeared, bruised, unglamorous. I forget there is magic out there still-
I love looking up at the sky. Back home in Beirut, the sky was full of possibilities. But mostly smog, dark clouds, light pollution. One month, in 2006, drones. Then the sky became a place of fear, and anguish, and loss, and grief. It stopped giving sunlight, rain, wispy cloud, but only bombs. Where was the human endeavor? Where was the space race, national pride, stretching onto the rubber band of impossibility? Space travel, exploration, discovery?
Then it stopped. I was on a plane that shot up into the sky. Opportunity. The atmosphere was still my ceiling. I was still under all this evil. But now I was in the land of opportunity, and the sky opened up for me once more.
