The World, Recreated, Again

Earlier this week, news outlets reported that scientists all over the world watched in ecstatic intellectual pleasure (last January, mind you) as, for the first time, cameras in a high-powered telescope caught ... the Universe's version of a big, gloppy sneeze. Piece by infinitesimal piece, the supernova's dust (snot) streaked through space at mind-blowing speeds. And these intrepid men and women watched, looping it (I'll bet) endlessly, yet still waxing rhapsodic about the event five months later, when reporters finally noticed Something Big had happened (last January).

I don't understand the fascination of the scientists who are probably still glued to their screens as little star-bits (to them) crawl from one place to another, and I certainly don't understand mainstream media's skewed Laws of Importance, but I do understand the star.

She began like every other cosmic ball of gas, just hydrogen and helium and basic space junk. But then something - either random chance in creation or a nearby partner over long periods of time - gave her too much heavier star-stuff. Most stars (like our sun) will just get old and shrivel up, turning into a White Dwarf. Not this gal, though; she uses up all her nuclear fuel and contracts into herself until she reaches critical mass and blows, with no option but to spray a good part of herself into the giant Cosmic Hanky. Then she sinks back with a sigh, a smaller, denser, and completely new entity - maybe a neutron star, maybe a (not to put too fine a point on the analogy) great black hole, but she is ... different.

Real life as metaphor for real life. Yeah, you guessed it - last Tuesday's post was the shrink-wrap pulling everything in toward ... well, let's just say my husband is a freaking saint. The pressure I put on myself when I have a new passion always takes its toll, but I didn't realize just how much of one until this week. I have such big plans - for this site, for my fiction and my teaching, for this amazing journey I'm on, for our lives - but the only way to do anything is one step at a time. Progress, not perfection. Routine, not religion.

Sparkle, not blind.

I am and I will be trying new things this year - a lot of new things - and I need to use my energy to relate these new adventures to you, not form a new cluster of celestial boogers. Look for more pictures, more links to quirky or amazing sites, more books to read, more fun ways to get cash into pockets. But don't look for a dazzling flash of light in the sky - these events only happen once every hundred years or so. At least, the Big Lug and I hope they do.

Oh, and by the way - the pint of Haagen Dazs did have something to do with it.

Just not enough to get me off the hook, darn it.