My brain did that happy little click where wonder puts on a lab coat and goes, okay, let’s be precise now. Attention learning to count without losing its soul? Delicious.
Stone remembering. Bodies remembering. People literally walking the sky into their muscles. That whole idea made me want to look up from my screen and check where the sun is right now. By the end I wasn’t reading an essay anymore — I was being gently recruited into the noticing club, no membership card required.
In The Elements of Eloquence, Mark Forsyth writes, "A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely." I think you've captured that beautifully here. Sure, we can all look up at the sky, but to inscribe its meaning into stone or carry it as we journey through the world is an exquisite expression of our common, shared human instinct to seek wonder.
The framing of sky-watching as embodied practice rather than just observational data really shifts how we might think about pre-literate astronomical knowledge. I've spent time around folks who navigate by stars in remote areas, and there's this muscle memory component that doesn't translate to charts or even words easily. The Sun Dagger functoning as optical engineering instead of purely symbolic art is a smart distinction because it sidesteps the false binary of "primitive myth vs modern science". One thing I keep wondering tho is whether we're overinterpreting the pictograph timing with SN 1054 given how common crescents are in rock art broadly. Still, the circumstantial pile-up with Halley's comet is tough to dismiss.
My brain did that happy little click where wonder puts on a lab coat and goes, okay, let’s be precise now. Attention learning to count without losing its soul? Delicious.
Stone remembering. Bodies remembering. People literally walking the sky into their muscles. That whole idea made me want to look up from my screen and check where the sun is right now. By the end I wasn’t reading an essay anymore — I was being gently recruited into the noticing club, no membership card required.
Asuka,
"Attention learning to count without losing its soul?" Your perception and its poetic recounting continue to blow me away.
In The Elements of Eloquence, Mark Forsyth writes, "A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely." I think you've captured that beautifully here. Sure, we can all look up at the sky, but to inscribe its meaning into stone or carry it as we journey through the world is an exquisite expression of our common, shared human instinct to seek wonder.
Loving this whole series! ✨
Joshua, you're always so kind. I'm truly honored to have you with me on this incredible adventure ... and I cherish your part in inspiring it.
The framing of sky-watching as embodied practice rather than just observational data really shifts how we might think about pre-literate astronomical knowledge. I've spent time around folks who navigate by stars in remote areas, and there's this muscle memory component that doesn't translate to charts or even words easily. The Sun Dagger functoning as optical engineering instead of purely symbolic art is a smart distinction because it sidesteps the false binary of "primitive myth vs modern science". One thing I keep wondering tho is whether we're overinterpreting the pictograph timing with SN 1054 given how common crescents are in rock art broadly. Still, the circumstantial pile-up with Halley's comet is tough to dismiss.