A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

Oh?  A thousand.  Well, I give just one word for this picture.

Infinity.

I give this one word in hopes it conveys the mind-expanding experience that I have when looking at the milky way.  Because I can't think of just the milky way when I see pictures of stars.  Sometimes I can't fathom how large or small a galaxy is so I think of infinity.  My mind pulls back in cinematographic pictures of the universe and sees other spiraling, galaxies and they seem so close to each other like electrons to nebula.  Yet I don't think I'd ever be able to reach another galaxy in a spaceship in my lifetime.

That cinematic camera pulls back and sees millions of galaxies that make up the universe.  I stop for a moment to see these galaxy stars then I pull back further to realize this universe is all inside something that is as small as an atom in what one might call an "alternate" universe.  This small as an atom that contains my world is but a smaller part of a larger whole.  The panorama starts pulling back again and I see molecules passing by, then an the organ of an animal, and I'm outside the body and a great big wolly mammoth like thing is trumpeting at me and rearing up.

The expansion of my mind has gone as far as it can go and my panaramic view goes back into the animal, into the organ, past the cells and into the nuclei that is the boundary of my universe.  Galaxy stars fly past and it feels like I'm falling but really I'm pulling my world back to me.  Recognizable planets whiz by, Jupiter, and Saturn.  Mars is on the other side somewhere and then earth.  I wait for the earth to spin in the right place and plummet down to outline of the USA.  Down to my state, my county, my city, street and then building.  But my cinematic view doesn't stop at me.  I see my heart beating and blood is pumped in and out.  I see the molecules of my organs and then the cells down to the electrons and nuclei.

There is more down there I know.  Another whole universe.  Why do we explore the skies, the planets and the galaxy?  Because there is something to be learned about ourselves in ourselves, around ourselves and beyond where we live.  Because really, the galaxy is just a nuclei.  Things go faster in the micro (body cells) and we might miss something as it whizzes past.  Watching the macro (the galaxy) is slower.  Haven't you ever used the pause button on your recorder to watch something?  I imagine that's the galaxy.  We live in infinity.