Wednesday 9 April 2008

Love among the Stars


Scientists, among others also fall in love. Chemists know that Love is about chemistry, Biologists that it is about hormones and Physicists that love is the result of unchangeable laws of attraction. Botanists give flowers, Nutritionists, blinded by love, give chocolates, Engineers give cantilevered underwear and Entomologists invite their loves into their parlours...!

It happened once that a scientist, an astronomer no less fell deeply in love with a new star. How could she not, for stars are beautiful - like a scattering of glittering diamonds on the darkest velvet of the night sky?

This star was newly discovered and she, Stella had discovered its presence. She longed to visit the star, to somehow declare her love for it - and yet... how does one tell a star anything? How shall it hear without ears? How shall it respond?

No matter to Stella, she was in love and love is not concerned with grubby realities. It is golden and dreamlike. She could not visit the star. She could not tell it of her love... but she could gaze upon it in rapture. In this lovestruck daze, she stared through her telescope at it and sighed. Her telescope was not close enough. She needed to get higher.

Which is why, dear reader one morning a group of gentlemen gathered in a park and set up a ladder, setting it in a cement base so that it would remain firmly fixed in place. All around the base was the green grass. People wondered at the ladder. Children were told off by their mothers for climbing on it - for fear the children should fall. Teenagers climbed it and were told by the park keeper to get off of it - in case lawsuits were filed against the builders of the ladder. A passing artist seeing the ladder rushed home to create, having been inspired by it. A woman with a camera took an photo of it having loved it's unusual quality.

But that night, Stella took her powerful yet small telescope and climbed the ladder. She wore a beautiful dress of silk and cashmere and fine shoes of silk satin. Her hair had been beautifully styled and she had put on make up. She climbed the ladder with care and leaned against the top rung before putting the telescope to her eye and gazing at the heavenly object of her affection. After a while, she smiled. She hung the telescope from the top of the ladder and it is said; by the man who was walking his dog, the two lovers in the park, the women who were out jogging and the police officer who dashed across to the ladder - that she went up the ladder to the top and kept going, up and up until she disappeared into the sky.

This was considered laughable by the scientific community. The air gets thinner the higher you go so she would be unable to breathe. Gravity would have been most insistent on her returning to earth so she would have fallen if she had climbed any further. But the evidence was this, that all of these people had seen her hang up her telescope by its strap and climb up. As all that was found of her was the telescope still hanging from the top of the ladder nobody could do anything. The police officer who climbed up the ladder after her did not dare to climb any further than the top - he could certainly feel gravity's insistence.

Nobody remembered that in some circumstances, tho' not all, Love conquers everything.


4 comments:

Rosemary in Utah said...

This makes me think of a singer named Keely Smith (anybody remember?) singing "Fly Me to the Moon". Which in turn makes me think of "Stairway to Heaven", (urban legend status!) Also Billy Pilgrim on Tralfamadore, and the Little Prince on his home asteroid!

Griffin said...

Ahh, well astronomy is science, but love is magic!

Another story tomorrow... I hope! I am thinking about the image trying to let it speak to me. So far it's saying nothing! ;)

madameshawshank said...

Went goosebumpy as she disappeared into the sky....oh oh oh what a journey she's having...star-dappled..'n such a meeting I imagine...I think she was exceptionally brave..to reach that top rung and then more..that stepping out and trusting to life business that some, a few, do. Can feel Stella urging us to climb our own particular stairways to heaven...Griffin, 5 stars!

madameshawshank said...

It's a sculpture at Sydney's Olympic Park/designed by Imants Tillers ~ an Australian artist..

the following from The Olympic Park website:

"Each of the six rungs of The Attractor bear a word from the lowest rung upwards, sensus, imaginatio, ratio, intellectus, intelligentia, verbum.

Sensus - percieve, feeling
Imaginatio - imagination
Ratio - account, reckoning, reason
Intellectus - understand, realise, meaning
Intelligentia - intelligence
Verbum - word, proverb

The Attractor was inspired by an illustration in a book by seventeenth century metaphysicist Robert Fludd."