Venus is rad.

Last night, or rather, very early this morning, I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep. So I left the bedroom and went to sit by the window to look at the river. The sky was cloudless and low on the horizon, shining like crazy, was Venus. I took this (unfortunately blurry) picture just to show how bright and big it was. The blue cast it has in the photo is accurate. Like a light-blasted Sapphire in the sky.



I put on my hat and wrapped the blanket around me to go out on the deck. I looked up high behind the house, above the trees and saw the stars were filling the sky. So clear. In the first minute I say 3 shooting stars. Right beside Orion, was little red Mars. I knew if I had a telescope, I could have seen Saturn too, just beside Venus. Knowing it was there was good enough for me. I saw it once, through a really big telescope. It was just hanging in the sky, purple and blue, with all the rings, just like in a picture, but it wasn't a picture. I was seeing it as it was, floating in the universe, 1279 million kilometers away from earth. Did you know all of Saturn and it's rings would fit tightly in the distance between earth and the moon? If you didn't, now you do.

Anyway, I felt pretty awesome, standing on my deck at 4:30 in the am, hearing absolutely nothing but the rushing of the river, looking at planets and shooting stars.

When I went back inside and fell asleep again, I dreamt a I saw a UFO in the sky. It looked sort of like a constellation but it was too perfectly arranged as a rectangle. I tried to whisper to T to come see, but I was paralysed. I fell asleep in the dream and when I woke up (in the dream) my skin was sun burnt from seeing the UFO. Thank you X-files for implanting details like that in my dreams. Happily, stargazing early this morning was nothing like my dream. Although it did remind me of another dream I had as a child that I still remember because of how scary and realistic it was. Venus was huge in the sky. As I stood there paralysed(again), in my parents backyard, it started to spin and spin so fast, I could hear it on earth, a pulsing, out of control vortex. Scared the bejesus out of me. It's funny that I should love stargazing so much but always have nightmares about celestial what-nots.

If I led a carefree life, I would get up at 4:30am every morning to look at the sky. I'd also have a kick ass telescope. One with little red beeps. Oh ya, and I'd be in a dark sky sanctuary or northern Russia or something. Gotta work on that whole independently wealthy thing...

It's okay though. Now it's day and the pumpkin soup is cooked and the squash is baking so I can't complain.