Honey and I walk side by side, silently, in the still night air, distant cars, not so distant chirpings, the occasional street lamp, and stars above. The night sky had just a hint of the delight of the milky way, something that is impossible to see any further north on the eastern seaboard. For the next 30 minutes life and the universe will be simple. just me, the dark, imposing trees, the cover of impossibly distant stars, and the brief glimpses of brightly lit living rooms filled with televisions, dishes, people, like series of a dozen short films, all literally 'slice of life' movies, made for my benefit.
When I was young, I thought all of the worlds problems could be solved by information: gathering information, making information accessible to all, making it posssible for anybody to communicate anything to anybody, making it possible for all of the worlds knowledge to be available to all. That would be all we would need for utopia, a perfect society, a perfect world.
Obviously, I was badly mistaken. We have what I dreamed about, in spades. Instead of not enough information, we have too much. Every day many of us drown daily in the global infosphere. Hundreds of emails, spams, web sites to check out, phone calls to return, IMs, voicemails, software to download, files to move, a cacophony of information burying our contemplative spirit. The rule of unintended consequences takes over, where the solution to one problem creates others.
How do we filter the flood, focus on what is important, and exclude what is not? How to we not get buried in minutia?
By walking Honey at night. By seeing the universe, the universe that doesnt care whether the wireless protocols are compatible, that doesnt even care of the entire human race lives or dies. The universe that gave birth to us, is our home, and may just yet provide us with a great sandbox to play with.
The universe. Thats what matters. Our relationship with the universe, with the unfathomable distance, age, size.
So I ignore the rest of my life, and focus on the universe, arcing above me between the shadows of trees and houses, that looks the same to me as it did to julius ceasar, to homer.
I focus on that, and on Honey. by my side. walking in the dark.
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