7703/20642
A small amount of jigsawing today. You think you're out and they drag you back in. Just a few outer bits stuck together. I can give up any time.
Otherwise another failure to launch either with work or exercise. Maybe I need a few days of recovery from the intensive Christmas/New Year period or maybe I try and ride this wave of inactivity (or should that be let the wave crash over me?) for a little while. I am back on my healthy diet, so that's something. But getting the kids to school and walking the dog twice a day (whilst Catie is not well enough to join in) is possibly work enough. Usually I wake up before the kids and I just about did today, but unusually otherwise I've been dragged from deep sleep at around 6.45am since we got home. Time seems to lose all meaning in the two hours to school time - sometimes everyone is ready by 8am and sometimes we're falling over ourselves to get shoes on at 8.40am. Yesterday we were almost the first into school and today the headmaster was shutting the gates as I scurried across the frosty playground to escape. He told me not to run, fearing the forms he'd have to fill in if I slipped. He was joking. But also not joking. I did nothing different between these two days, but left the school 15 minutes later than I did yesterday. And then walked the dog through the freezing countryside. Come on, that's enough work for anyone.
Another dog walk tonight into the dark cloudless night (at just after 6pm) where the lane in the fields behind our house does its best to convince me it's haunted. But I wasn't bothered by the ghosts of dead Hertfordshire peasants as I was rapt by the starry sky. It's not a bad thing to be taken back to the awed wonder of childhood as you realise how big the Universe must be (and even then underestimate it, possibly by infinity miles) and your own insignificance. Really we should never lose that feeling. It's fucking crazy how big this place is and how far away those stars are. I wondered today if any being on a planet surrounding one of the stars in Orion's belt was looking out towards our solar system and spotting our twinkling sun. I wonder what shapes that cunt is making out of the constellations from their POV. Certainly the cunt who came up with the stars I was looking at resembling Orion had a pretty good imagination. Though not as good as any of the cunts who came up with nearly all of the others. At least Orion's belt does look like a belt and you fancy you can see a sword hanging from it (if you're on acid). I thought of the people of 3000 years ago having more or less the same view as me and the aliens having a view of us and the fact that even if there was anyone looking at our star at the same time as I'm looking at their star, we'll all be long fucking dead before the light reaches any of us.
As a kid of about 10 I'd come to an astronomy week at Kilve court - a house in the countryside where they'd do academic retreats, but all I could remember was that the weather was so bad that we didn't really get to do any star gazing and that there was a girl from another school who was tomboyish and who I thought was funny and cute, called Smudge Smith. I think that was her nickname rather than her given name, but I liked that that was how she introduced herself. Even now I am impressed with how cool that is. She made a big impact on me and I was delighted when a couple of years later she also happened to be on a maths course I went on there (I think I only went to Kilve three times and once was in the sixth form, with all the sixth form kids from our school - only a couple of kids from each school got to go on these things so it was quite unlikely that Smudge and me would meet again). I enthusiastically greeted her with her nickname and she was impressed that I remembered her, as she had absolutely no memory of me at all. I had made no impact.
The stars have the power to make us gaze in wonder, consider the impossible nature of our existence and remind us of (one sidedly) romantic failures.
It's good we don't think about the Universe too much - and mostly these days we don't get a chance to look at it due to light pollution and living in cities. Out here in the countryside, it's right there to make you feel small and meaningless in every sense.
None of this matters. Smudge Smith is out there somewhere, still not remembering me, probably not calling herself Smudge any longer (shame), maybe not called Smith any longer. The guy who decided that some stars looked like Orion is no longer plagued by other people saying "the fuck they do, mate" or any other issues and all that remains of his life is his poor grasp of astronomy and what things look like, which is still way more than 99.99999% of us will leave behind. He's dead and forgotten, which is not as bad as being forgotten and not dead.
The alien catching the light from our sun at the moment I looked at their star is millions of years away from even being born and in all practical sense, basically the same number of years away from not existing again. There's no human life left as they catch the glint of a twinkle of a star we call the Sun and they call X3p7 or think is part of Zargon's Washing Up Brush constellation (it's unlikely that I have got those names bang on).
No wonder I can't really be bothered to try and write any more jokes at the moment. What's the point?
Yet here we are. I still am.
And I say all this as a positive thing. I am glad the stars made me think all of this.
