Beautiful America: Looking Up

We don't spend enough time with our head in the clouds. Or the stars, or simply that indescribably play of colors as our star rises and sets on our flat earth where we stolidly plod onward through our daily toil. I read and write a lot of science fiction, and even I don't take the time to look up, to pierce the veil of the bluness and see the infinite vastness of the universe beyond it. Without that awareness of "what's out there?" how are we to dream big enough to vault off this world into that starry blackness?

I had the pleasure, last year while still living on the Farm, of taking a city friend outside at night and simply saying "look up," then keeping my mouth shut while I got to watch his face. I'm sure he had seen stars before, as we all have, but the play of emotionsI glimpsed tells me that like so many of us, even in the science fiction fandom, he'd forgotten what they looked like. I live in town, now, so it's not easy to see them clearly. But tonight, if you don't have clouds, go outside.

Look Up.

Early morning's reward over the Farm.

Can you see the Blue Angels?

bright flowers against a bright sky

Light captured, reflected, and magnified by the clouds.

Sunbeams falling on moored boats in Maine, near York Beach

The sky's edge framed in corn plants.