Space, time and sadness

"A black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light can not get out. The gravity is so strong because matter has been squeezed into a tiny space. This can happen when a star is dying.

Because no light can get out, people can't see black holes. They are invisible. Space telescopes with special tools can help find black holes. The special tools can see how stars that are very close to black holes act differently than other stars."


One morning i lay in bed with a curious little boy who the night before had answered my question of 'Hey what are you thinking about?' with; 'Invisible things.Things we can't see, like air and ghosts.' ...

That morning we lay together for a while, before anyone else was awake and he asked me if i could show him the videos on space and voids that i had promised.

So we watched; And at 34, i learned how a black hole is created... it's August, and the analogy is perfect.

She was a star, right... A great big mass of burning energy, held together by a force that pushes inwards. Bright, warm, beautiful until... until the core burns out, the gravity that held it together, becomes the force that destroys it.

A black hole is born when there is no more energy, when there is no balance, when one force becomes stronger as the other becomes weaker, and eventually there is an explosion... an implosion, a moment when light collapses in on itself - gives way, and the darkness is a force so strong it sucks up what remains and pulls in all matter around it.

Even 10 years on- even this far off,  i can feel that pull. I can't see it. But i can feel it.

Every year... The planets align and despite that cloudless blue sky today, i don't need a telescope to know it's there.

If you know darkness, it's easier to get... how hard it is. How the biggest, brightest, most beautiful of them, the ones we can see the clearest because they are closest to us- are also the ones that are probably most afraid of burning out. Of becoming the void that steals the light around it.

I don't know how you stop a star from dying. If i knew, maybe she'd still be here.

But hey, look out for them, the ones that are acting differently- if your mass becomes greater than theirs, maybe gravity pulls them towards you, maybe you can just hang out together, a spectacular constellation of sorts. Maybe when they collapse then, they become Neutron Stars instead of black holes. Maybe i'm just simplifying things i don't fully understand.

I don't even know man.

Isn't this supposed to get easier?

The sun is nice. It hides all the other light, makes everything seem okay. And usually i think the night sky is pretty damn beautiful- But this time of year there's always this moment, where i look up and all i see is the immensity of every possible black hole. All the dying stars, and my inability to save them.

It passes though. We move on.

"... the weeping man, like the earth, requires nothing,
the man who weeps ignores us, and cries out
of his writhen face and ordinary body

not words, but grief, not messages, but sorrow,
hard as the earth, sheer, present as the sea—
and when he stops, he simply walks between us
mopping his face with the dignity of one
man who has wept, and now has finished weeping..."