Feelin' Kinda Sagan-y

Oct 5

8:44 pm – As a lover of astronomy, and a dreamer of space, I’ve often imagined what it would feel like to be lost in the huge emptiness where recognizable places are few and far between – to be lost so far from home that the thought of picking a direction and following it seems daunting. The ocean is that, my friends. Now, just beyond the halfway mark on this voyage, ocean surrounds us in all directions. Naturally, there’s little fear of actually being lost, but just the fact that there’s absolutely nothing in sight – no lights, no other vessels, no animals (except for the seabirds that seem to be following us), and certainly no land – is really quite something. Really, a photograph can’t capture this. The ocean is huge and vast, and all I know is that I’m somewhere in the middle of it.

The crew had a bit of a party last night, so I stopped in, though I felt way out of my element. They didn’t talk much, either, actually, so I didn’t feel too bad about generally keeping to myself out of shyness. They just popped in a music video mix DVD and let it do the partying for them. It was just a mix of ‘80s rock songs, culminating for me at the 2-hour mark, when Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” came on. I wish the DVD had ended with that.

Apparently the satellite TV might kick in tomorrow. Whee!

Started reading Carl Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World today, after finishing The Third Chimpanzee (which was generally pretty good, though I was most interested in just the first 100 pages or so or human origins). Sagan described how, as a child, when pondering something his math teacher had said about how there’s no biggest number, he had the urge to write out all the integers from 1 to 1000, and he did so. Made me remember that I had done the exact same thing as a child, though on a typewriter. I just sat there typing out numbers. It was a personal project of mine that my family was well aware of. If they wanted to keep me occupied for a bit, they could just say, “Why don’t you go work on your numbers?” and I naturally would. This maybe only lasted a week or so – once I got into the thousands, since I wasn’t using the space bar, it became hard to tell the numbers apart. Can’t tell you why I didn’t use that space bar. I guess I saw it as a useless and inefficient operation for my needs. Anyway, I like finding out I have things in common with people I admire, especially things in my childhood.