Banjos at the Gloaming.

(The title would make a remarkably cheesy folk-band album name, don't you think?)

I've gone about as far as I can go studying for tonight. I have to wait for a professor to get back to me by email before I can continue...

So. How are you? :)

I've been dreaming again, tonight. Taking my laundry out to the washing machine, peering out the window and seeing the gloaming (I no longer use the term "twilight", thanks to Lord Dunsany...). I've been thinking between loads of socks and shirts and underthings about life and love and all that. Just the small things.

And they are small things, in a way. I can't help but remember that I am very small, and the star Antares tells me so. And he ought to know, because he is HUGE (being a supergiant and all). Thinking about black holes, and dark matter, and the 90% of the composition of the universe made up of stuff we don't understand yet...and probably never will.

About how content I am not to know about certain things.

Isn't it funny that I can study the stars in classes, lectures, and labs; determine absolute and apparent magnitudes, understand fusion in a star's core and the lifecycle of stellar bodies, know the limit of mass of white dwarf stars...and yet when the question is posed, "What is occurring at the center of a star?" I still want to say something silly like, "An angel dance-party...?" Or better yet, "I don't know."

I'm content not knowing, even when given the theories and conjectures. I'm fine not knowing for certain. I like the mystery. I don't HAVE to know, and nothing you say can convince me that knowing is the most important thing. And I don't believe the textbook when it tells me the inner workings of stars, because it's all theories. Why can't we be content to guess, and let the guessing be the fun?

(For the record...I KNOW why we can't do that. Because we're human, and while science is both fascinating AND highly important, it also forces one to take things a lot more seriously than I tend to enjoy. I'm not trying to pick a fight with scientists. I'm just being honest.)

Bring it down to my own tiny sphere of influence, though, and things get murky. I want to know everything. Right here. Now. With ketchup. Please and thank you.

All of the mysteries of my own relatively insignificant life, please, and hold nothing back. The future in all of its facets, if you would. Could you make that to-go? Give me names, and dates, and pictures of places I'll see. Give me reasons, shortcuts, and excuses. Give me a glimpse. Give me a vision. I want to see me in ten years...twenty...thirty...

What a silly creature I am. Maybe I should pull my rocking chair out into the driveway, sit, and stare up at a billion bright shells wrapped around a billion angel dance-parties, and feel the contentment of the not-knowing wash over me.

Or just go finish my laundry, and leave the future up to Someone who knows much better than I do.

-The GLS