[null, {"document_url": "https://newscluesandblues.wordpress.com/tag/opinion/", "unformatted_src": "https://i1.wp.com/www.bigskyastroclub.org/images/pbd_sm.jpg", "src": "https://i1.wp.com/www.bigskyastroclub.org/images/pbd_sm.jpg", "formatted_filename": "pbd sm", "alt_text": "Pale Blue Dot Wide"}, {"document_url": "https://newscluesandblues.wordpress.com/tag/opinion/", "unformatted_src": "https://i2.wp.com/www.bigskyastroclub.org/images/pbd_close.jpg", "src": "https://i2.wp.com/www.bigskyastroclub.org/images/pbd_close.jpg", "formatted_filename": "pbd close", "alt_text": "Pale Blue Dot Close"}, null, null, null, null, {"document_url": "https://newscluesandblues.wordpress.com/tag/opinion/", "unformatted_src": "https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/17/3b/e2/173be21f32b5b6bc1419181d962ff0fe.jpg", "src": "https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/17/3b/e2/173be21f32b5b6bc1419181d962ff0fe.jpg", "formatted_filename": "be f b b bc d ff fe", "alt_text": "Image result for beach and eternity"}, null, {"document_url": "https://newscluesandblues.wordpress.com/tag/opinion/", "unformatted_src": "https://i1.wp.com/www.theartstory.org/images20/photo/surrealists_1.jpg", "src": "https://i1.wp.com/www.theartstory.org/images20/photo/surrealists_1.jpg", "formatted_filename": "surrealists", "alt_text": "1930 - from the top left: Paul Eluard, Jean Arp, Yves Tanguy, Rene ClevelBottom Left: Tristan Tzara, Andre Breton, Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Man Ray", "rendered_width": 561, "rendered_height": 414}, null, {"document_url": "https://newscluesandblues.wordpress.com/tag/opinion/", "unformatted_src": "https://media.timeout.com/images/102089735/630/472/image.jpg", "src": "https://media.timeout.com/images/102089735/630/472/image.jpg", "formatted_filename": "image", "alt_text": "The Persistence of Memory (1931), Salvador Dal\u00ed", "rendered_width": 761, "rendered_height": 570}, null, {"document_url": "https://newscluesandblues.wordpress.com/tag/opinion/", "unformatted_src": "https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2901/14196144264_0bf0bcce01_b.jpg", "src": "https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2901/14196144264_0bf0bcce01_b.jpg", "formatted_filename": "bf bcce b", "alt_text": "Image result for graveyard at sunset"}, null, null, null, null, null, {"document_url": "https://newscluesandblues.wordpress.com/tag/opinion/", "unformatted_src": "https://userscontent2.emaze.com/images/0023c7fd-e5fd-43cf-933a-280a9c0f1f3f/ebf13ac2-eae2-40a6-8fc1-10bfce4478b5.jpg", "src": "https://userscontent2.emaze.com/images/0023c7fd-e5fd-43cf-933a-280a9c0f1f3f/ebf13ac2-eae2-40a6-8fc1-10bfce4478b5.jpg", "formatted_filename": "ebf ac eae a fc bfce b", "alt_text": "Image result for time and culture"}, null, {"document_url": "https://newscluesandblues.wordpress.com/tag/opinion/", "unformatted_src": "https://i2.wp.com/img.bhs4.com/57/3/5739f8d6162834907707b506c1fc5d67d78f996b_large.jpg", "src": "https://i2.wp.com/img.bhs4.com/57/3/5739f8d6162834907707b506c1fc5d67d78f996b_large.jpg", "formatted_filename": "f d b c fc d d f b large", "alt_text": "Image result for time and culture"}, null, null, null]
Skip to content Skip to navigation 

Pale Blue Dot

-by Carl Sagan – January 25th 2010

“The spacecraft was a long way from home.

The pale blue dot.” 

Carl Sagan on God 

Consummation Of Grief – Poem by Charles Bukowski An Equation to Persuasion

Numbers are the universal language in the mind of humanity

They are the mathematical principle of our inherent tapestry

In nature designs and  heavenly equations

Rotate endlessly beyond our considerations

Why then do we conjecture about the logic of its proposition

That life is eternal with such antipodal opposition ?

In a universe of distinct and geometric symmetry

Where the laws of movement are governed by natural tyranny

The musical mastery in the octave of a tonal interval

Where two frequencies having a ratio of 2 to 1 are integral

Why then does the meandering minstrel of philosophical bent

Guide us through this hypothesis with an aim to circumvent?

Has a miscast chord aimed from above the celestial sphere

Forced us to reevaluate the reason  we are here

Is it some kind of mistune played on our minds

Focusing on the ancient  written designs

Whose words we ponder with urgent solicitude

Speculating the proof which nurtures disquietude?

Is a ritual to the perfect harmony of its continual foreseeing

Like a harp from the heavens of an unknown destiny

Playing the tune of mystery mirrors the pain of history

With the force needed to make that leap in time

To take us into the higher octave into another paradigm. The Persistence of Memory (1931), Salvador Dalí 

From Beyond Welcome stranger to my final rest

I come to you from the other side

A faceless person emerging from this nest

With a passion to guide

In life as in death the sad truth

Is captured in this prism I hold

The  wonders of  eternal youth

Of celebrations foretold

Do not deny me the dignity

Of your reflective thought

Strike a light on my memory

Immortalise what I sought ! 

Take any case in point.

I’m not sure if you know of Charles Bukowski but after reading his poem Gamblers All it got me thinking about things in life -especially my life. Here’s a copy of it below: Gamblers All – Poem by Charles Bukowski

sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think,
I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside
remembering all the times you’ve felt that way, and
you walk to the bathroom, do your toilet, see that face
in the mirror, oh my oh my oh my, but you comb your hair anyway,
get into your street clothes, feed the cats, fetch the
newspaper of horror, place it on the coffee table, kiss your
wife goodbye, and then you are backing the car out into life itself,
like millions of others you enter the arena once more.

you are on the freeway threading through traffic now,
moving both towards something and towards nothing at all as you punch
the radio on and get Mozart, which is something, and you will somehow
get through the slow days and the busy days and the dull
days and the hateful days and the rare days, all both so delightful
and so disappointing because
we are all so alike and so different.

you find the turn-off, drive through the most dangerous
part of town, feel momentarily wonderful as Mozart works
his way into your brain and slides down along your bones and
out through your shoes.

it’s been a tough fight worth fighting
as we all drive along
betting on another day.

Charles Bukowski
This poem really struck a chord in me not only for its stark reality and pragmatic philosophy about modern contemporary suburban lifestyle but also because  it changed my attitude towards my approach in living and experiencing my days. I try and keep this alive in me.
In more ways than one we are all gambling on getting through another day and if we put this in perspective then all of our worries, concerns, anxieties evaporate into a meaningless corner of social priorities based on illusions of importance.
The idea that each day could be our last is a celebration of fortune. I mean this in both the obvious  sense of fortunate to be alive and the metaphoric sense of surviving the elements of nature.
No one escapes the trials and tribulations of day to day living but to see it expressed in such simplicity and with such fresh perspective lightens the load. The stress and the discomfort become a shared and collective experience which triggers a genuine drive to see life from the vantage point of a risk taker who is forced to sucuumb to the pressures but also realise that luck plays a huge role in the fact that we are alive and empowered to think, interact, experience, observe and participate.
The poem injects an appreciation and a celebration of the life I have and having said this I am reminded of one of Einstein’s famous quotes , ” God doesn’t play dice with the  Universe !” and my response to that is ” What’s God got to do with it?”
How do you see this poem?

Any comments, suggestions, directions, ideas, criticisms, overhauls, rejections are more than welcome……..

We are all visitors to this place and travellers through space so bouncing off one another can only improve or disprove my emotional reactions…and I really want to know what it is that I am trying to visualise and communicate with help from my comrades in life… Time is a strange thing……

The Oxford Dictionary defines it as ” the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole”

The Online Free Dictionary describes it as , “a non-spatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future”


“an interval separating two points on this continuum; a duration…

I can remember clearly the long hot summer holidays of my youth where the endless blue skies were captured and time seemed to stand still in my memories as if the moment was like an extended pause along this “non-spatial continuum”..

yet further on down the road…………….

I can also clearly remember the pressures of time and the lack of hours in the day to fulfill my work commitments……..my days are divided into working hours and the years progress and the cultural context of my concept of time becomes my reality.

But is this the only reality of time ?

If we imagine the microscopic world  of quantum physics then the idea of time takes on a different complexion…………

Quantum World of Time

I have the imagination to reflect and consider other perspectives of time experienced by other cultures….

Take for example the Eskimo culture where the sun stays above the horizon or below the horizon for periods of up to six months at a time. For the Eskimo culture time is not a continuum of day/night cycles. Their time is measured by the number of sleeps they have. This is not easy to appreciate but important to internalise.

For many cultures in the past and the present the idea of time was and is the repetition of the cycles of the weather, the moon and the sun.  Things came and went and happened in much the same ways as we experience our bodily functions.

So what exactly is this thing we call time ?

Well, time is subjective and it is personal…the experience of time translates with a person’s social , cultural  and historical context. So if time is subjective and experienced differently by different individuals in different cultures and in different periods in the history of humankind how do these experiences relate to objective time ? By objective time I mean the concept of time surrounding us in the universe ..

or another way to phrase it is endless time…….. How does endless time capture or contemplate our concept of personal time ?

A mathematical equation can summon an understanding of the dimensions of time.

If space is endless ; then time is endless

endless space = endless time

To appreciate the reality of time we must dissect it with the reality of space because space and time are mutually interdependent- one cannot exist without the other.

The equation merges into an x-y axis where x is time and y is space…. So on any given point in the continuum of endless time our imprint is transcribed momentarily in the continuum of endless space.

Logic dictates that the point of dissection between these two axes is immersed in a configuration of endlessness so  hypothetically any deviation from this point renders the event of the intersection with two possible outcomes…..

Outcome 1 : The point of intersection has left an imprint in the fabric of space-time and has left a permanent legacy which is lingering and fixed in objective time so this would add material to the universe fulfilling its ever expanding process.

Outcome 2 : The point of intersection has dematerialised into an obsolete event and space-time rebounds filling in the imprint with a renewed presence.

Below are interesting lectures: One delivered by the physicist Lawrence Krauss where he attempts to explain the ever expanding universe in ways that are easy to understand and appreciate and the other by Carlo Rovelli examining the dimensions of time:

To Infinity and Beyond: The Accelerating Universe

What is Time ? Carlo Rovelli

Albert Einstein

We are all visitors to this place and travellers through space so bouncing off one another can only improve or disprove my ideas of time…and I really want to know what it is that I am trying to visualise and communicate with help my comrades in life…



