Simple Things/ Lang Kenneth Haynes
Constellations
Constellations
Our fascination with the night sky is understandable. Even those who claim disinterest in astronomy can point out the Big Dipper and Little Dipper. Many can
connect the stars to make out Orion’s Belt. Even when we don’t try to express it in words, many marvel at the order of the Universe. Sure. Neal deGrasse Tyson,
director of the Hayden Planetarium of the New York Museum of Natural History, knows more about celestial bodies than I do. But I doubt if he is any more
fascinated, than me, by the way the sun rises and sets on the horizon at predictable places at different times of the year — even though the sun doesn’t really rise
or set at all because it is the center of our little solar system and it is the planets that make up this system that moves around the sun. Tyson knows the equations
that track these movements. Equations and scientific proof are fine but I’m satisfied to call it mystery.
It just so happens that the sun is the star that is closest to earth. Some of the other seemingly small, luminescent flecks we see in the night sky are
considerably further away and some are many times larger than the sun. To make these notions even a little more difficult to grasp, some of the stars we see
might not be there at all. Some could have died or taken on another form a ridiculously long time ago and it’s taken a long expanse of time for their light to
reach the Earth’s atmosphere so we could see them. Please keep in mind that if a star is 150 light years away, that means that the light from the star that we are
seeing now actually left that star 150 years ago. And if 150 years seems like a long time, the distance from the star to the Earth is downright outrageous when you
consider that light travels at about 186,000 miles/second. So the distance from the star to Earth is 186,000 X 60 (seconds/hour) X 24 (hours/day) X 365
(days/year) X 150 (years). I don’t know what the number turns out to be but I do know that it has a whole lot of digits and another language might do a better job of
describing it. Light year works for me. It’s synonymous with humongous.
Does any of this sound strange? Of course it does, and here’s a thought that’s, perhaps, a little stranger: Much of what we think we see, hear and otherwise
experience is other than what we think it is. There appears to be considerable interest in the concept of “false memory” these days which essentially says that
much of what we think we remember either never happened or happened quite differently than we remember. I bristle at the mere thought of such an idea even
though I have a growing list of things I “misremember.” For example, my Aunt Marian did work in a welfare office in Harlem for more than 30 years, but the
building she worked in is located in the Washington Heights section of Harlem and not around 135th Street and the East River as I had thought for several
decades.
But the idea of false memory isn’t that strange when I think about things like the sound barrier. Such phenomenon can be connected to, what I’ll call, false
present upon which a false future will be built. How many times have you heard a plane in the sky and looked up to where you thought it would be only to
discover that the plane had already passed through the place where the sound came from? This happened because the plane was flying faster than the speed of
sound. Have you ever had the experience of looking under couch cushions, in the pockets of pants, underneath mail on the kitchen table and on shelves in the
garage in a frantic attempt to find your car keys only to discover that you’d been clutching them in your right hand the whole time? My guess is that some readers
will confess to, or at least entertain, the idea that much of what we believe is based on illusion or what we have been taught to believe for whatever reasons.
One such reason may be the human tendency to assume that what we need is someplace other than where we are. I confess to looking for keys that were in my
hand on more than one occasion. It’s like we’re all very nearsighted and neglect to see the forest because there are so many trees.
Maybe this is why we are generally captivated by constellations. And this is even more intriguing since the constellations do not generally look like the
things they are named after. Orion doesn’t really look a hunter. Taurus doesn’t look like any bull that I’ve ever seen. Corona Borealis looks like a Northern Crown
because somebody said it did. I’ve seen just about every Hercules movie ever made and none of the actors who played Hercules looked anything like the
constellation of the same name. We connect the dots or stars with imaginary lines to form imaginary figures. Constellations do not only exist in the heavens, they
are very present at ground level as well. It’s just that they are too close for us to see when we are right in the middle of them. It’s like holding a book too close to
your face and trying to read. The words all melt together into one big blur, you get dizzy and your temples start to pound. It’s more soothing to look at the night
sky. “Look. There’s the Big Dipper.” You feel very smart because you identified a constellation. It’s like getting a question right while watching the TV game show
Jeopardy. It’s often harder to see things right where you are, but we will all see eventually. That’s what we’re here for.
It’s tricky business, but Earthly constellations are here for us to work with and learn from. It may take months, years or an entire lifetime to recognize that your
partner is actually your father in disguise. Strange how she evokes a reaction in you that is so like the way you responded to your father saying that particular
something he always said. You know the expression. The one that always got to you. The one that always made you angry no matter how many times you
promised yourself you wouldn’t let it get to you. Or maybe it was a magic button that only your mother could push. Or a particular friend. We all have such soft
spots and we are sometimes amazed at how accessible these places are to people who do not — on the surface, anyway — remotely resemble the original
intruder. Yogi Berra once said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” It’s a little redundant and that’s why we laugh, but it is déjà vu all over again. And again. And again.
The circumstance you find yourself in this very second could be a mirror image of a circumstance you were in 10, 20 or 30 years ago. You were likely a child the
first time you remember it happening. The computer you sit in front of today could have been the pretend console of a spaceship way back then. The job you
started yesterday could have conjured up the same feelings of newness and uncertainty you experienced your first day of kindergarten. But any way you look at it,
chances are you’ve been here before.
Take the time to look at the constellations in your life. You may have to take a couple of steps back in order to see them properly. And as is the case when
learning about constellations in the night sky, it might make sense to learn how to locate the most obvious first. My guess is that there is a Big Dipper that we’ve
danced through countless times, and it’s right at eye-level.
connect the stars to make out Orion’s Belt. Even when we don’t try to express it in words, many marvel at the order of the Universe. Sure. Neal deGrasse Tyson,
director of the Hayden Planetarium of the New York Museum of Natural History, knows more about celestial bodies than I do. But I doubt if he is any more
fascinated, than me, by the way the sun rises and sets on the horizon at predictable places at different times of the year — even though the sun doesn’t really rise
or set at all because it is the center of our little solar system and it is the planets that make up this system that moves around the sun. Tyson knows the equations
that track these movements. Equations and scientific proof are fine but I’m satisfied to call it mystery.
It just so happens that the sun is the star that is closest to earth. Some of the other seemingly small, luminescent flecks we see in the night sky are
considerably further away and some are many times larger than the sun. To make these notions even a little more difficult to grasp, some of the stars we see
might not be there at all. Some could have died or taken on another form a ridiculously long time ago and it’s taken a long expanse of time for their light to
reach the Earth’s atmosphere so we could see them. Please keep in mind that if a star is 150 light years away, that means that the light from the star that we are
seeing now actually left that star 150 years ago. And if 150 years seems like a long time, the distance from the star to the Earth is downright outrageous when you
consider that light travels at about 186,000 miles/second. So the distance from the star to Earth is 186,000 X 60 (seconds/hour) X 24 (hours/day) X 365
(days/year) X 150 (years). I don’t know what the number turns out to be but I do know that it has a whole lot of digits and another language might do a better job of
describing it. Light year works for me. It’s synonymous with humongous.
Does any of this sound strange? Of course it does, and here’s a thought that’s, perhaps, a little stranger: Much of what we think we see, hear and otherwise
experience is other than what we think it is. There appears to be considerable interest in the concept of “false memory” these days which essentially says that
much of what we think we remember either never happened or happened quite differently than we remember. I bristle at the mere thought of such an idea even
though I have a growing list of things I “misremember.” For example, my Aunt Marian did work in a welfare office in Harlem for more than 30 years, but the
building she worked in is located in the Washington Heights section of Harlem and not around 135th Street and the East River as I had thought for several
decades.
But the idea of false memory isn’t that strange when I think about things like the sound barrier. Such phenomenon can be connected to, what I’ll call, false
present upon which a false future will be built. How many times have you heard a plane in the sky and looked up to where you thought it would be only to
discover that the plane had already passed through the place where the sound came from? This happened because the plane was flying faster than the speed of
sound. Have you ever had the experience of looking under couch cushions, in the pockets of pants, underneath mail on the kitchen table and on shelves in the
garage in a frantic attempt to find your car keys only to discover that you’d been clutching them in your right hand the whole time? My guess is that some readers
will confess to, or at least entertain, the idea that much of what we believe is based on illusion or what we have been taught to believe for whatever reasons.
One such reason may be the human tendency to assume that what we need is someplace other than where we are. I confess to looking for keys that were in my
hand on more than one occasion. It’s like we’re all very nearsighted and neglect to see the forest because there are so many trees.
Maybe this is why we are generally captivated by constellations. And this is even more intriguing since the constellations do not generally look like the
things they are named after. Orion doesn’t really look a hunter. Taurus doesn’t look like any bull that I’ve ever seen. Corona Borealis looks like a Northern Crown
because somebody said it did. I’ve seen just about every Hercules movie ever made and none of the actors who played Hercules looked anything like the
constellation of the same name. We connect the dots or stars with imaginary lines to form imaginary figures. Constellations do not only exist in the heavens, they
are very present at ground level as well. It’s just that they are too close for us to see when we are right in the middle of them. It’s like holding a book too close to
your face and trying to read. The words all melt together into one big blur, you get dizzy and your temples start to pound. It’s more soothing to look at the night
sky. “Look. There’s the Big Dipper.” You feel very smart because you identified a constellation. It’s like getting a question right while watching the TV game show
Jeopardy. It’s often harder to see things right where you are, but we will all see eventually. That’s what we’re here for.
It’s tricky business, but Earthly constellations are here for us to work with and learn from. It may take months, years or an entire lifetime to recognize that your
partner is actually your father in disguise. Strange how she evokes a reaction in you that is so like the way you responded to your father saying that particular
something he always said. You know the expression. The one that always got to you. The one that always made you angry no matter how many times you
promised yourself you wouldn’t let it get to you. Or maybe it was a magic button that only your mother could push. Or a particular friend. We all have such soft
spots and we are sometimes amazed at how accessible these places are to people who do not — on the surface, anyway — remotely resemble the original
intruder. Yogi Berra once said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” It’s a little redundant and that’s why we laugh, but it is déjà vu all over again. And again. And again.
The circumstance you find yourself in this very second could be a mirror image of a circumstance you were in 10, 20 or 30 years ago. You were likely a child the
first time you remember it happening. The computer you sit in front of today could have been the pretend console of a spaceship way back then. The job you
started yesterday could have conjured up the same feelings of newness and uncertainty you experienced your first day of kindergarten. But any way you look at it,
chances are you’ve been here before.
Take the time to look at the constellations in your life. You may have to take a couple of steps back in order to see them properly. And as is the case when
learning about constellations in the night sky, it might make sense to learn how to locate the most obvious first. My guess is that there is a Big Dipper that we’ve
danced through countless times, and it’s right at eye-level.