It has been well known for over 50 years that we are made of “star stuff.” The original universe only contained hydrogen and helium and maybe a few other elements. Almost everything we require was built in the explosions of dying stars and the slow accretion of that matter.
When I sit on a beach I try to ponder this grandeur. To see the pebbles all around me as constructed by near magical time and process. Of course, the sand on which the pebbles rest is just as amazing, being made of rocks formed by volcanoes, eroded, compressed, ground down again over the mere 5 billion years or so of this planet’s existence.
The shells, from dead snails and clams and oysters, are more recent than I myself. The seaweed possibly only a few weeks old. Immense history lessons as I sit under a blue sky and blazing sun that concentrate this exact instant into my consciousness.
The real miracle is that my momentary consciousness, floating free of the star stuff in my brain, can range over time and space to imagine such things. To imagine even more. To find ways to discover or “prove” such ideas. It leaves me breathless.
I pick up a nice hot rounded pebble. Ancient stars in my fingers. And me – lord of my own universe, free to roam my thoughts and memories.
HuntingtonHarborThoughts 