Whatever You Are Doing

Stop.

Look at this.



I have been staring at this image for 10 minutes, and now I know why. It looks like a woman. No, I am not crazy, look at the pale pinks, the vibrant reds, the bluish veins. Look at that little swirl to the left. It's a woman. This could just as easily be a well-lit close-up of you. Millions of light years away, an image 50 light years across, just one tiny corner of one tiny corner, is a womb as pink and perfect, giving birth to new stars brighter than our own Sun.

It's from Hubble. The Carina nebula. Meant to celebrate the telescope's 17th year.

Does anyone else take incredible comfort in the fact that we are made of star stuff? Looking at this picture it makes perfect sense to me why women are soft, supple, swirling. The picture is pretty, sure, but it is depicting horrific violence, an incredible maelstrom of creation and destruction, bits and pieces of existence hurling into one another, creating new starlight. Birth isn't painful or chaotic as a punishment. It's just what creation is, two faces of the creative force, light and dark each perfectly balanced. Stars grow, live, nova, die, implode unto dust, and out of that dust swirls new stars. Mix some of that same dust together, add a little water, and you get a new you. Is it possible to look at this picture and not be overtaken by your inner philosopher? Can a human being look at this and not see himself in the collisions, not see his woman in the pink and blue tendrils?

Okay the answer is probably yes, so resist the urge to be a smart ass and comment as such. I'm just saying. Stop and look. You are not puny in comparison to this image. You are enormous. You are as big as the sky.


-m