Sometimes, I’m standing in a place and I think, suddenly, about what is actually holding me there. And how gravity is, and how limited our understanding of it must be. Then the camera in my mind zooms out and I see the earth and the sun and I think about what and where we really are and how it’s just a rock. We’re just on a rock that hurling through this vast, expansive void and how cold it must be in space, I mean it gets pretty fucking cold here on earth too sometimes and we have lots of things to keep us warm and jesus how does the sun do what it does? I mean… just a minute ago I was standing in the shade and it was easily 10 degrees cooler than the direct sunlight. How is it possible that something that is as far away as that can affect us so dramatically, it takes like 15 minutes for the sunlight to get from the Sun to the earth right? Sometimes it takes me that long to take a dump… Then I think about how fast we are traveling around the sun and how small our little spaceship really is and how far we are from even the closest thing to us and I feel like I’m standing on top of an infinite mountain about to roll off. Like at any minute someone could come along and just knock me over and I’d fall through space forever like the bad guys in Superman 2… Then I notice that someone needs a pen, or the craft service table has a fresh pot of coffee and I’m like, “Sweet.”
Yes! This is exactly how I feel all the time. It’s like there’s this constant flux between big picture and small picture that I think helps keep us balanced. For instance, I always have to read blogs or news stories that are interesting or inspirational to make me feel like part of the world before I can dive into mundane tasks at work. Speaking of which, I better get back to it. : (
earth will fit into the sun 100 times