Woah!

The other night I was pondering life while watching the phosphorescent dome above (I'm all about cliche time-wasting activities). It was an exemplary summer night; the moon was full and illumined, but not to the point of intrusion: everything in the cosmos was of equal display. I'm finding this activity rather distracting: it doesn't matter where I'm at or what I'm doing, if the night sky is skinny dipping into the troposphere, I'm sneaking a peak, a very long peak.
Sometimes when tripping through the stars, I suddenly have an emotion, which for the longest time I was unable to articulate. It's a concoction of feelings, like insignificance, and loneliness, while at the same time, peace. Last semester, my English professor was lecturing on Edmond Burke and his proposition about the "Sublime." In his book he says, "The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature . . . is Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other" (Burke, On the Sublime, 58). Immediately, I knew exactly what Burke was speaking of; It's that Holy Shit! feeling one gets when understanding that they reside in something so enormous and so powerful.
I'm not much of a cosmologist: I despise arithmetic and have a brain incompatible with scientific ideas. However, I can understand the difference between a small number, a large number, and an insanely large number. The nearest star to our sun is Proxima Centauri, floating some 4.3 light years away. Light travels at a speed of 186,282 miles per second. Appropriately named, a light year is the distance light travels for one year. So if you take 4.3 and multiply it by 186,282 multiplied by however many seconds are in a year, you'll get the mileage. And that's only the distance to the nearest star. The average galaxy consists of anywhere from 100 billion to 1 trillion stars. And it's estimated that there over 100 billion galaxies -- some say over 1 trillion galaxies -- in the universe. Math isn't fun, so let's just agree that the amount of stars is mind-blowing, and leave it at that.
Mind-blowing isn't a hyperbole here, but veritable. We don't even have words for such large amounts and distances. I claim the journey from here to my hometown as "far," and from here to Beijing as "very, very far." It's just such a colossal leap, going from distances on Earth to those of the cosmos, going from thousands of miles to millions, and billions, and trillions.
I want to travel to New York one day. I've never been to New York; I've never seen it up close, but still, I am confident it exists. I've seen pictures and videos, and heard what it's like from others. Last night, I fixedly stared at a vibrant speck of light -- a star probably, maybe a nearby planet. I wished I could visit it, see it up close, but that's impossible; the peep show is free, but no one's touching. And it's frustrating, seeing somewhere you wish to be, knowing the precise route -- a freaking straight line -- and yet being incapable of getting there.
I now understand why we humans are so inclined to hatred, and violence and all other sorts of heinous acts; it's because deep down we are all afraid -- so very very afraid. And how can't we be; we've had the weight of trillions upon trillions of miles pressing in on us for centuries upon centuries. And the future hasn't changed the reality that we are still so clueless, so hopelessly ignorant, as to the moment our ever-expanding universe, driven by the greed of it's Manifest Destiny, will blacken that one stretch of vacancy -- that final tribe's land -- whose inhabitants, coerced by greater forces, will join in the inexorable crushing of Earth; their feet will pound; their voices will rise. And our feet and voices will do the same. And the planet will tremble. And the planet will jolt, before violently bursting from existence.
But this is just me being morbid. I get like this sometimes. Everyone does. Yesterday, I was reading into parallel universes. Some scientists have theorized that there exist an infinite number of universes residing right beside us, which we are unable to perceive or interact with. And basically, anything that can happen, has happened -- i.e., in another universe. So if the trillions of miles of space didn't obliterate your neurons, now there's an infinite number of that infinitely expanding space.
I love writing music. It's been a passion of mine for some years now. At times, however, the endeavor can be maddening; there is no foolproof process for composition. Sometimes, I flop down to wail out some new tunes and nothing happens; whereas, on other occasions, when I have no intention of composing, a song will materialize with ease. I never have to work it out note for note. No artists create in such a way. Painters don't first envision their work, object by object: They first see a scene in it's entirety. In the physical world creation is a process of steps in which things are built upon each other. So it's rational to believe that the same law would apply to the mental world. Therefore, if we receive partially structured creations in our minds, are we really the sole creators? Are we even creating anything at all? Or we are merely seeing into another universe where these creations of ours have already existed, or are currently existing? Maybe we are all just a band of thieves, riding the cosmic waves, desperately tossing our neurons up through the infinite existence -- hoping and praying they'll return, one day soon, attached to something purposeful....