Cosmic Reflections, Astral Projections

We dream of travelling through space, but is not the cosmos in us? The depths
of our spirit are unknown to us. The path of mystery leads inwards. In us or
nowhere is eternity, with its worlds- the past and the future.

Novalis
At night on an island far from home, the only light comes from above. This is
the first time I have really experienced the phenomenon of the nights sky.

I watch with wonder what has occurred on each and every night of my life,
directly over my head while I am sleeping or dreaming. All this exteriority
there for me to behold, how far can my eyes reach into the endlessness of far
away lights? Projections of other worlds, parallel universes, possibilities of
past lives and potential future existences bounce towards me from all that may
be out there, in the light filled void.
Stars.
Planets and meteors, Im told. So far away their distance can only be
measured in time, not space. But here am I, so comparatively small in one
way and so comparatively big in another. Just the palms of my hands obscure
this outer opening and leave me an entity unto myself, disconnecting this I, to
retreat inwards.
.Im taken back to another time altogether, quite the opposite in
physical circumstances to what I have just been experiencing.
It was a small, quite empty white room containing me and another person, a
friend, we were talking. I dont remember how the conversation began, or the
precise words that were exchanged. What I remember now are the hand
gestures and in them the meaning of our conversation presents itself.
He was trying to describe the size of an atom in my body. His fingers
narrowed to small points pricking in the air, I couldnt see. He told me that the
largest cell in my body was an egg cell and it was the size of an average full
stop. It breaks down into billions of atoms; an organism unto itself all
contained within this full stop. I just cant imagine anything so small, past my
visibility; its too much to comprehend. Looking upwards, he asks if I can
envisage the size of the universe, can I imagine that I am this tiny spec of a
person on a tiny spec of a planet in the tiny spec of our solar system. Can I
imagine that there are billions of galaxies, each containing millions of suns
which each have many orbital planets like the one we are on now. This is
easier, I have seen these stars and Im told some are enormous suns light years
away, Ive never quite understood what this means but the general enormity of
this universe has been impressed upon me. Reverse it, he says, go that far
away from yourself but go smaller instead of bigger, then you can have a
feeling for the atoms which make up you.
When I close my eyes, I see all the constellations orbiting around my being. I
see suns rising and setting in my chest, moons waxing and waning in my
belly, eclipses and shooting stars, meteors exploding. I feel that my elbow is
millions of light years from my knee, that my fingertips are neighbouring
planets in the solar system of my hand. My twin sister solar system hands
which move now in opposite directions, mirroring each other away from my
eyes and.
..its still there for me to see, all this exteriority or all this interiority. I
stand balancing on a seesaw; I am the outer and the inner. I have the ability to
fall back in time and jump into the future.
Storms are brewing on the horizon; bolts of lightning will connect the
electrical circuit from us into the sky, making visible the forces that connect
everything. These forces which allow my elbow to touch my knee and my
hands to clench into fists, which pull us around the sun and spin us on our
side, which throws some things at us and pushes other things away.

The storm moves slowly towards me. Thoughts flash in time with the
lightning but my capacity to capture them into words is delayed, following
like a rumble of thunder. And before I have a chance to follow the thought
another flash occurs, another thought throwing me out into the search for
words, the wait for thunder.
Inner Earth
In my dream last night I was building a castle from powdery white and
weightless snow. It was a fairytale castle with turrets and spires and when it
was finished I wanted to live inside of it, but I was too big and it was so small
and so delicate. I wanted to cherish its perfection and live my own miniature
fantasy through it. Suddenly the symmetry is disturbed, first one turret and
then a spire has disappeared and I watch as more of the powdery whiteness is
dancing and glittering through the air and onwards towards and out of an open
window. My castle is disappearing, disintegrating and Im powerless to stop it.
There is now only half of my castle remaining and soon it will be no more
than a memory, I look out of the window to where the snowflakes drift and
see my castles replica on a grand scale. It grows while my castle fades. Im
torn, I cant choose which to watch, the destruction or the creation, the dying
or the living, the old or the new. And then its gone.
A Question of Balance
Day and night occur in perpetual simultaneity, both reliant always on the fact
that the other is existing elsewhere. They happen at the same time, they lean
upon one another, they have found the optimum balance. It is us who move
between them. We are not subject to the shifting sands of time. On the
contrary, time is subject to our persistent movement through its desert. We
stir, leaving a small trail behind us in the eternality of otherwise untouched
sands.

I sit now in between day and night. I thunder towards the dark, through the
end of the light, and soon this day will be no more. I will be immersed in the
blackness of night, although I will know that day is still happening, and will
always be happening whether I am experiencing it or not. But for now, I am
staying here in this half light. For me this is the most interesting time; a time
where I see things appearing from nowhere; a time where I watch as other
things that were so present in my view are slowly and magically obscured,
until nothing remains.
In another kind of half light, a different alchemy will occur. These things will,
instead of diving themselves into the ocean of nothingness, create themselves
out of this same nothingness until they become something. Slowly I will see
forms appearing on the surface, growing with each breath out of obscurity into
actuality.

But this time is not now, not yet, but it will be, somehow.
Upon this I fancy to myself that nature very much resembleth an Opera, where
you stand, you do not see the stage as really it is; but it is placd with
advantage, and all the wheels and movements are hid, to make the
representation the more agreeable. Nor do you trouble yourself how, or by
what means the machines are moved, though certainly an engineer in the pit is
affected with what doth not touch you; he is pleased with the motion, and is
demonstrating to himself on what it depends, and how it comes to pass. The
engineer then is like a philosopher, though the difficulty is greater on the
philosophers part, the machines of the theatre being nothing so curious as
those of Nature which disposeth her wheels and springs so out of sight that,
that we have been long a guessing at the movement of the universe.

Bernard de Bovier de Fontenelle

The Mechanics of this moment
I was searching for my memory.

A ghost dressed in purple, once told me that memories act like bridges; except
they span across connecting two points in time instead of space. She told me
this while arranging candlestick holders into concentric circles in a room with
no windows. Somehow, it felt like summer in that room.

The room I am in now looks out over yellow fields and birdsong seeps
through the window panes. Slowly as I grasp at another memory, the room
begins to change. The window moves away from me until it only remains as a
speck in the distance, the yellow fields like a candle flickering far away. The
walls on either side of me move towards each other so that I am standing in a
long corridor. I hear rhythmic tapping coming from behind me and as I turn I
can see a light protruding from underneath a door at the end of the corridor.

The tapping becomes louder as I walk towards the door and as I open it, I am
greeted by a white light, slowly my eyes adjust.
The engineer sits at a desk, monotonously typing. He is completely
expressionless, staring straight ahead into the blankness. He doesnt notice my
presence. From somewhere above the ceiling a train of paper feeds directly
into his typewriter. A bell rings, indicating the end of a line and he pushes the
type bar from left to right, returning it to the starting position and then
continues his typing. Below the desk, the used, typed on paper flows into a
subterranean vault, through which my eyes can only see a metre or so
downwards before they are confronted with the blackest of blacks.

He writes only in the present tense;

Green light.

Gravity pulls horizontal waterfalls north. The east and

west are in mourning. The south remains visible only in
the evening. In the spring red leaves fall upwards,
towards the sky, as in osmosis they distribute equally,
landing on each of the stars.

Breeze comes from inside and pushes outwards through the

skin and with every step a new storm is created somewhere
within.

All things align at twilight.

I am not reading these words, I know them before they are written. My
thoughts and his words are entangled and I cannot tell which comes first,
whether he writes, or I think. A strange dizziness comes over me, I feel as
though I am in the past and the future simultaneously. The moments are
repeating themselves unstoppably, I am looking at the reflection of my
reflection of my reflection to infinity. Forever.

Far away, as though in another body, I retreat back through the same door I
entered, leaving the man with his typewriter and my moment. And I am in the
room where I began, the flickering candle has transformed back into a window
looking out over yellow fields, only now there are a set of concentric circles
ploughed into the centre of a field in the distance.
 Tuesday April 6th 2010
Wittenham Clumps, Oxfordshire

04.57- 10.17 Sunrise 06.29

-Azimuth 79
15.59- 21.19 Sunset 19.47
-Azimuth 282

04.30 - 09.59 Auroral chorus

Sounds from lightning and the Aurora Borealis are echoed between
us on earth and the ionosphere which surrounds us.

Georgina Tate