The Aether that has opted out

12-30-2010 Vientienne - day 2

The aether that has opted out

Once the escape velocity [perceived] barrier of my possessions and quazi-attachments in my temporary home-base of California has been breached and I finally went into the "orbit," I began to realize something peculiar. There is a thin mobile substance composed of people going around the planet - those quirky souls that have in one way or another opted out of the entrenchment of their system and "went into orbit." Can't help but think of the network of satellites that our space agencies claim to launch into the orbit with enviable regularity. They drift just above the surface - close enough to observe and partake when they feel like it, but not far enough to be sucked in by the innevitability of gravity. In fact, using gravity itself to keep them at that perfect radius - used to the sensation of perpetual fall that others on the surface perceive as rotation. 

The peculiar part is that from the surface, these "satellites" are as impossible-looking as stars.....and one does not realize just how many there are until one launches off and becomes one of them. The strange, bright creatures that picked up and took their home with them - in their hearts and their singular backpacks. They listen for the beliefs of the stationary ones from a different place, knowing that much of that will not hold in the next place they land, surrendering any desire to pierce the paradigm bubble they hear in their words. Their stationary fellows build these "bubbles" to make their reality comfortable, livable. 

I shudder and relax thinking at the ubiquity of this dichotomy throughout the many millenia.....tiny sparks moving across the sky of human existence.

~ H. Melville