I am a sucker for space.Maybe it was being born in the last year of the 60's. Perhaps it was reading those stacks of old Popular Science magazines from the late 50s and early 60s in the Alliance library in Akola. Maybe it was the sheer romance of leaving the planet behind and soaring into worlds unknown.
The release of the image above - taken recently by the refurbished Hubble space telescope - rekindles the old fire. Why does everything have to be so totally, achingly beautiful? To think of the vast immensity of the structures captured by the camera - and to see so much luminous beauty just boggles the mind. On another level, it seems to me that the photo looks suspiciously like a comical pointing elephant too.
On one hand the awesome wonders of inter-stellar creation. On the other the amazing delight of recognising beauty - taking place within the mysteries of my head.
No wonder space will remain - has to remain - something to be awed about. How quickly we delve into the mundane and humdrum - to drown out the call of beauty.
The poet wrote so many years ago: I see the night-sky, the works of your fingers, the moon and stars suspended in space - oh what is man that you are mindful of him?
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