little things...
Every night, as I walk through the B1 lounge (our game room) on the way back to my berthing, I pass the pool table. I don’t know who does it, but with each evening pass I see a fresh rack waiting for the next game.
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March 30, 2008
March 27, 2008
orion's feet
not too long now until we see our first star. The sun is circling round us in the final throes of dusk. It’s been a busy last few days, plenty done, plenty to do. Soon, more photos of life and the sunset. Soon, I’ll be watching for Orion’s feet on the horizon (we seem him upside-down here).
March 16, 2008
when it is dark enough, you can see the stars...
I forget, quite often as many of us do, to wonder at the greater spectrum of things, to find significance in insignificance, to respect accordingly the miracle that we are alive…
We had our first science lecture of the winter season tonight. The winterover cosmologist (our Canadian beaker, Keith) for the South Pole Telescope gave us an overview of the equipment and what it is the SPT team is currently pursuing.
Turns out, in short, that they are working to better understand the forces of entropy. In a series of steps, they are utilizing images from the beginning of time (or as far back as we can see) to better reveal the expansion of the universe since its explosive start. In more completely understanding just how galaxy cluster upon galaxy cluster has traveled over the eons, they will begin to gain an understanding of how gravity and the theoretical force of dark energy interact to keep the universe expanding, rather than contracting as gravity alone would dictate.
SPT begins the first step in this process by identifying thousands of galaxy clusters in the distant sky. Upon identifying the clusters (each themselves made up of thousands of galaxies), they will provide that information to other telescope teams (such as Hubble) which will then track the identified galaxy cluster to measure its distance from and the speed at which it moves away from us.
They identify the clusters by observing the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) which is, in effect, the afterglow of the Big Bang. In essence, the light from that first explosion, from the very beginning remains present in the background of the sky as microwave radiation. If it was part of the visual spectrum, we would see the night sky glowing with iridescent clouds - remnants of our violent start. Although we can’t see it completely without the mechanics of SPT (a massive machine and mirror, bringing the sky to receptors sensitive to 1/100,000,000,000,000,000,000 the energy of a 100W light bulb), we’ve all seen it to some extent. About one percent of the static that you see when a TV is struggling to find reception is due to the noise of the Cosmic Microwave Background. If you sit to watch the snow traveling across your unreceptive television screen, you are bearing witness to the beginning of the universe. In my eyes, that should be defined as reality television…
What amazes me about tonight (as always when it comes to the stars) is the sheer scope of it all, how truly small and insignificant our spaceship Earth is when compared to the vastness of space - how daunting and amazing it is that we exist, struggle, and thrive so tiny, so isolated in the larger view. The image above is from a very small portion of our sky. It is a rendered image of the data that SPT is working to collect and the black specs, each one of them, is a galaxy cluster standing out against the background radiation. Catch that - each tiny black spec in this photo is a galaxy cluster - a grouping of thousands of galaxies, each galaxy made up of billions of stars. Try multiplying those numbers up…and that’s from only a sliver of our sky. Our own single galaxy, our Milky Way, has over two hundred billion stars - two hundred billion brothers and sisters to our own sun.
And here we sit, on spaceship Earth, traveling around as part of it all.
After the presentation, I sat down for parts three and four of From the Earth to the Moon, a mini-series documenting the Apollo space program. Suffice to say, watching the risk and the struggle of our first steps to orbit another heavenly body, of our attempts to grow beyond our humble sphere…it was magic. And soon, when the sun completes its slow spiral downward, I’ll be able to gaze up at the night sky in the darkest space imaginable, be able to see the great beyond as only we can here. Gaze up, and dream of falling skyward.
Jim Lovell, William Anders, and Frank Borman, while orbiting the moon for the first time in human history closed a message home with this:
“good night, good luck…and God bless all of you, all of you on the good earth.”
seasonal extension
I’m in thrall at the winter setting sun here. My favorite hours of dusk - the light of the last hour of sun on a snow covered Lake Superior shore in January - are extended here. The sun is almost set, but what I might spend an hour watching in my life stateside, here I can watch for a week.
March 13, 2008
a chi-town moment
I find myself piled down in front of my computer tonight, a chunk of memory from (and slight nostalgia for) Chicago. Memory of a moment of hauling my ass a few miles from my condo on my bike (in January) to go to attend a life drawing session. Short the drawing (writing some tonight took care of that craving), the nostalgia is calling forth a multitude of happenstance. The strong presence of the early winter chill fresh in my lungs and on my lips, my core warmed by the exercise but my hands frozen, the confidence of tackling something new in an unfamiliar place, and the slight fear and hesitation of it too (welcomed, with the follow-through of the act) - these things are gathered in my mind tonight. It was one one of the first times that I had a chance to play in a world so alien to me (millions of people, rough neighborhood - cheap rent for artists) and I knew no one. I was free to explore any path that I might choose, rise up or crash down, with no one local to fall on or share my story with. It was a unique freedom, and part of the promise I find in the frost of cold air entering my body.
There are small parts of the winter here like that, though not as many as I had expected. Routine is easy to find and though there is much to learn about the other fifty-nine folk here (hell, still much to learn about myself) we all share the same context. If we choose, we can walk easily with an assumption that we know something about everyone around us because, to an extent, we do.
What catches me are the glimpses of the unknown and the unexpected. The former comes most often in the setting sun - in shadows and colors I’ve not before seen here. It comes in temperature too, -79 F with a -118 F windchill tonight. The latter shows up in conversation, in the break of assumption as we grow to know those around us more completely.
It still blows my mind how simple it is to presume that the next several months will be like they are now, one month in. It hits me equally hard to know that change is expected, and in a community this isolated, this compact and protracted, interesting things will be afoot.
_________________
On a side note, my bike in Chicago? A used mountain bike purchased on the cheap from one of the most intriguing cooperatives I’ve come across yet. A slew of volunteers (grease monkeys, bike messengers, able passerbys) gather together donated bikes, repair them, and sell or warehouse them. When they get enough working bikes together, they (with the appropriate party and fanfare) pack a millvan (giant shipping crate) full of them and send them off to a country where a bike is worth a year’s salary or more to those that need them. If you’re interested (especially if your from around Chicago) you can find out more at www.workingbikes.org.
March 12, 2008
perchance to feel
Once, in the beginnings of a singular love, I traded two small clay beads for a sarong, worn by the woman I fell for that summer. We met beneath the moon and the white pines of the upper midwest, two figures in the night, shirking responsibility for that moment, for that pair of smiles. It would be several weeks until we saw each other again, each item in the trade filling a part in a long, unique story.
Over the following years, the sarong became a representation of her, a wrapping to letters, to memory as we traveled our own paths and dealt with the realities of a long-distance relationship, with the trials of a powerful love, play, and the difficulty of letting go.
It amazes me today, still, how many emotions are tied to the feeling of that material between my fingers - love, joy, fear, jealousy, pain, goofiness, warmth…
I no longer have that sarong - it has been placed away where powerful, beautiful memories need go if they are not to lead one’s life in nostalgia. I no longer have it, but catch a feel like that fabric and
wham!
instantly back in those moments, reading letters over distance, a lover held close by something once held close by her, all the emotions of the arc of the relationship boiling in at once.
Like the barest hint of a smell or a sound - memory triggers that we cannot let go of, cannot ignore.
It becomes something beautiful to pass on one day in story - to self, to friends, to children, because, isolated, the beginning of the memory will never cease to be powerful and amazing.
It becomes something beautiful to learn to say goodnight to, to learn to treasure without holding on too tightly, to ease the grip of memory on the present, and to breathe deeply.
It becomes something beautiful to say goodbye to.
March 11, 2008
fastest sport in the olympics
I’ll call it a good day, today.
The afternoon was spent with the rest of the IT crowd outside, flagging the route to the RF building so that we can find our way in the dark. The RF building holds the controls to our satellite dishes, our backup servers, and our backup radio systems. An important building, as things go, and about half a mile from the station proper. We now have a line of black flags on bamboo poles to shine our lights at come night and I was able to drive around one of the snowmobiles for the afternoon (missed that more than I thought). We came in frozen. Though warm for here and the season, it was still -65F with a -95F wind chill.
After that, I wandered out to summer camp to get the remaining feather pillows I needed for my bean bag - since we don’t have any plastic beads, and the galley frowned on my wanting to use rice, down was the best I could think of. That experiment should pan out in another half hour or so - I interrupted the creativity binge for a bout of badminton and just got back.
Strange, to do two things this past week that I haven’t in over fifteen years. The last game of badminton that I played was in fifth grade, and the last time I used a sewing machine was in junior high. Still, badminton went well (no injuries, no major losses, hell of a lot of laughs) and my bean bag looks fairly decent. I only had to rip apart a few seams…
The sun is winding down farther in the sky - it no longer blinds us while playing pool in the game room. The temperatures fluctuate, but average out a steady drop, and time moves steadily, but slowly. In a week and a half we’ll be having our sunset dinner, celebrating the last we’ll see of it for months. Already the shadows and colors are taking on that of the last half an hour of the setting sun, only we get another couple of weeks. I’m looking forward to the vibrancy of color that normally winks at you lasting days, at the green flash that fortunate few see only for a second lasting hours…
Sounds like something to wax poetic on.
It’s been tiring these past few weeks, a time spent withdrawing into self much more than I am used to, especially in a place where social activity is so easy to come across (reminds me of the Lemondrop and the art house). I haven’t written much, nor pursued art as I am used to. The time has been good, simply mellow in a way that is somewhat new to me. I’m beginning, however, to feel recharged; ready to kick out the hammock, lay back, and write to the fine folk that I am fortunate to consider friends.
Glad to know that you’re all out there.
March 04, 2008
sauna daze
Not much to say tonight, as it reaches the close, just relishing a good conversation about books and meanings, some story trading, a sauna and a shower.
Still have to celebrate those simple things to keep perspective here.
The sun continues to circle lower on the horizon, the shadows lengthening each day. You notice this not directly, but in smaller ways. During a game of pool two of us found ourselves blinded looking down the table toward the windows in the lounge. One or two more days and the sun will have lowered enough that the station will block it. We won’t be blinded again for six months.
It’s hard to believe, but we’ll be in the dark by the end of this month - or at least in a long-term twilight.
I’ll throw up some photos soon of day to day life here. A brief traverse through the waking hours of my world and a few last photos of the horizon before it goes dark. Also, there’ll be a couple of pictures from a trip out to SPRESSO on Sunday. SPRESSO is a vault, buried about 35 feet down in the snow, seven miles away from station, that houses equipment to measure seismic activity around the world. It was a good Sunday trip, a couple of hours away from the station and out on the polar plateau.