Imagine you are lifted out of your house through a window. Your body rises above the roof and soon the outlines of your neighborhood come into view. You begin to recognize where you live from the satellite images on Google Maps. Maybe you figure out which way is north. Everything assumes the miniature quality of the view from an airplane’s window. You can see most of your city. Rising further, you begin to see the horizon buckle into a shallow curve. The sky turns black, the sun turns into a blinding cone of white light. You are in space. The earth resolves into a ball and its continents are cocked to one side in an unfamiliar way. The earth gets smaller and smaller and the last feature you can distinguish is an ice cap. You are now rising above the disc of the solar system. On your right is a radiant expanse that hides the sun. On your left are two or three points of light. Beneath your feet the earth bleaches as it grows smaller. Soon it’s a point of light that is impossible to distinguish from the other planets. The entire solar system is at your feet. If you extend your right hand to cover the sun and cast your face into shadow, every planet comes into view. Beyond and beneath the planets is a sparse silver sand of stars. The world is no longer everywhere, but only straight down. Every book in the Universe is, near as makes no difference, exactly the same distance from you. Knowing where you are, and seeing what you’ve seen, would you care about you?
Space relieves us all in an objectively infinite way. The size of the Universe is its own absolution.
[via lazenby.]
a technology job is no excuse 