When the last
small arc of the orange
disk dips beyond the
horizon, some of the most beautiful colors available to the human eye linger splay themselves brilliantly across the sky.
Did you ever look at the sun as it was going down (or coming up, for any other time you can't safely get a good look at it...) and ponder the dissonance that arises when you realize that the glowing disk that at times seems so close that you could reach out and touch it is actually an incandescent mass of condensed gases burning millions of miles away?
Often the moon, a pale, weak white is your only reminder of the sun, but sometimes during this short interlude between day and night, the sky will be completely devoid of any celestial bodies. Venus will then appear, followed by the brightest stars in the sky.
There's a moment when your mind can actually grasp the scope of things, and it realizes the scale of things, that everything you see around you, the grass, rolling hills, your own arms and legs that to you seem so large, so central to your being, are actually mere billionths of existence on a planet that is merely a speck of dust caught in the gravitational pull of a star of which there are countless others in the galaxy which is not unlike the many others that exist in our sheer cluster in one corner of a universe.
If you're still enough, you can lie on your back in the grass and stare up, watching each of these stars gradually fade into existence as the colors around them deepen imperceptibly.
Do you feel cold when you think of this?
I know that some people do.
It gives me chills when I think of the intensity of the feelings and the marvel of design that is encompassed in this small, insignificant body of mine.
And that every particle of every atom in the universe contains the same complexity and beauty.
How can one ever feel cold...?