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When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams,
to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured
with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
When I look at a star in the night sky, it’s more than just a source of inspiration and contemplation; it comes in a full-to-burstin’ box of beliefs, assumptions and knowledge, all based on basically nothing. That the star actually exists is the biggest and boldest assumption. That it’s a fiery celestial body, that it’s billions of trillions of miles away, that the light I see has taken millennia to reach me, that the star was born during the Big Bang and is moving away from me as part of an ever-expanding universe, is all just a shadowy pile of bric-a-brac collecting dust in my headspace. Somehow, somewhere along the way, this pretty twinkly little light got all junked up, and junked me up with it.
