The Muse came, bearing a hammer…

My head still hurts, but it’s now a dull roar in the background instead of the sharp, persistent hammering which overrode my ability to concentrate.  Earlier, I could not listen or see; sensations made the pain more acute with each blink of the eye or sound upon the eardrum.  I had to shut down.

I laid down in the quiet of my bedroom, hot pad on my head, a couple sips of green tea in my belly.  It was almost too quiet, tomb-like; I couldn’t avoid the continuous rap-rap-rapping in my head.  A quick click-click and the bedroom TV was at A&E.  Ah, soft noise, nothing overbearing or insistent.  I drifted off.

It was only for a few minutes, maybe fifteen or twenty, enough for the ibuprofen to kick in and the rat-a-tat-tat to soften to a monotonous throb.  Somewhere in that state of consciousness between sleep and not sleep, I heard that familiar male voice.  Listening more, I found myself waking up and welcoming hearing this man and others, talking about comforting and enticing subjects.  My reverie of solitude was over, or at least I’d been drawn back, as if from the dead.

Funny how this person’s voice could bring me back and prompt my interest immediately, past immediate pain.  It was not just the voice, though; the subject matter of space exploration and the attempt to communicate the human condition to whomever/whatever lies beyond our solar system engaged me.  It was a food, a soul food I’ve been missing. 

Ah, Carl Sagan and the Voyager Interstellar Outreach Program, featured on A&E.  I’d forgotten all about them.

While laying there watching and listening, thinking both about the subject matter at hand and about the nature of the man who woke me up, I recalled both something that Jan Haugland had posted recently and something I read earlier this week about Helen Thomas. 

Jan pointed out that we’re missing a person who can inspire science and research, who encourages us to pursue greater knowledge about ourselves and our world.  Carl Sagan was such a man.

Helen praised John Kennedy as the only president in her estimation who made Americans look to their higher angels.  Kennedy pushed us to look beyond this earth, to look ahead and above to our potentiality through space exploration.

Now it makes sense.  I’m sick in the head, frustrated after a long dry spell without someone who makes me, all of us, hunger for the search of the great unknown.  A leader who truly seeks to blaze a trail beyond triviality and the trite; we hunger for a leader who will push us to realize something more than we are today. 

Our American culture has been indulging in the worst sort of navel gazing, watching vapid celebrities and listening to little more than white noise from the press.  We are passive as we are fed the world through a narrow tube from someone else’s already narrow perspective.  Our so-called “Reality Television” is just that, an empty sucking void of self-centered egoism which mirrors our current state.  We are sated with bread and circuses, declining as we recline.

The only time we should be reclining is when we look to the stars for our next point of exploration.  We’ve forgotten that we are only one of countless specks, a small blue point, as Carl Sagan said.  We’ve lost sight of our insignificance in the grandeur of the universe; mislaid what small nobility we had by lack of charity and aid to the other occupants of this small blue point.

As much as this pains me, it pains me more to know there is little hope in the near future of a reprieve from this loss of leadership.  There’s no one on the horizon quite like Carl Sagan or John Kennedy.  How tragic.

This heartache of loss hurts more than my headache. 

5:48:35 PM    comment []

My head hurts…

I don’t know if it’s just the latent affects of last night’s Fat Bastard Shiraz, or from the screaming and squealing of my cabin-fevered kids, or the changing air pressure coinciding with new snow falling, or continuing annoyance over downward spiral of American politics and foreign policy, or what…or maybe all of the above.

I have a massively oppressive headache.  Ugh.

I’m not certain I’m going to get a real post out here today.  I’ve sent the kids out to play with friends for a couple hours, taken some ibuprofen, getting a hot pack for my forehead and will now lie down for a while.

Stay out of trouble in the mean time – that means keep your hands to yourself, use your “indoor voice”, and call me only if there’s blood or flames visible.  And don’t even think for a second I won’t know whether you’ve been behaving, because I have “Mom eyes” in the back of my head.

Agh, maybe those are making my head hurt, too.

<shuts bedroom door>

12:45:33 PM    comment []