In The Aspen Trees

Zarmina's World
Illustration Credit & Copyright: Lynette Cook

Explanation: A mere 20 light-years away in the constellation Libra, red dwarf star Gliese 581 has received much scrutiny by astronomers in recent years. Earthbound telescopes had detected the signatures of multiple planets orbiting the cool sun, two at least close to the system's habitable zone -- the region where an Earth-like planet can have liquid water on its surface. Now a team headed by Steven Vogt (UCO Lick), and Paul Butler (DTM Carnagie Inst.) has announced the detection of another planet, this one squarely in the system's habitable zone. Based on 11 years of data, their work offers a very compelling case for the first potentially habitable planet found around a very nearby star. Shown in this artist's illustration of the inner part of the exoplanetary system, the planet is designated Gliese 581g, but Vogt's more personal name is Zarmina's World, after his wife. The best fit to the data indicates the planet has a circular 37 day orbit, an orbital radius of only 0.15 AU, and a mass 3.1 times the Earth's. Modeling includes estimates of a planet radius of 1.5, and gravity at the planet's surface of 1.1 to 1.7 in Earth units. Finding a habitable planet so close by suggests there are many others in our Milky Way galaxy.

Visiting the Graveyard

When I think of death
it is a bright enough city,
and every year more faces there
are familiar

but not a single one
notices me,
though I long for it,
and when they talk together,

which they do
very quietly,
it's in an unknowable language -
I can catch the tone

but understand not a single word -
and when I open my eyes
there's the mysterious field, the beautiful trees.
There are the stones.
- Mary Oliver
Red bird

It is very hard to wait. A great deal of my spiritual training has been to encounter the mirrored light that shines reflecting many of the facets of the complex jewel that is creative waiting. In some ways that is what I am doing now. I am waiting creatively. As ever, I must do this with the sense of something coming but no clear idea what or when. I am better at it these days, but I would hope that I am. It's been forty years since I realized my position. I don't mean I have been waiting forty years, but that these waiting times have come and gone and come again over these forty years. I guess that there are many people better at waiting than I am, who did not start so far back in the pack as I did. Me, I required spiritual training in several modes to simulate a natural attitude to "not yet". The anxiety of being at the mercy of people I do not trust has been the last to subside as I have found ways to trust even these.

It is not a moment too soon. I am, I suspect, soon to be struggling with my health far more than I am now. Now it is just irritating even though there is much I can no longer do. It won't take much for something more sobering to occur, but this is not very serious and is quite natural, a part of the ordinary processes of the planet. I will certainly be tested, will certainly uncover new facets of the complex jewel of waiting.

In The Aspen Trees

I fear you will not
notice me here. He said stand
silently, gathered,
no loose ends dangling
in the sultry wind blowing
through the aspen trees.

I must stand tight bunched,
constipated with held back
hope. I know I could
break my main chance by
acting too soon and not sure
when true change will come.

-written by me,
August 2, 2009 9:10 AM