07/08/2020
The Heart of the Sun
In this monologue professor Robert Harrison talks about human solarity in its various aspects. Music included in this show: La Nuit du Rat–Le Féline Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun–Pink Floyd Gimme Shelter–The Rolling Stones
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[Music]
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This is Robert Harrison for entitled opinions,
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the still point of the turning world,
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the pharmacon that does it all.
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[Music]
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As we wind down our season during the ongoing pandemic of Anno Dominique 2020,
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I thought I would share with you some thoughts today about the topic of shelter and exposure.
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Here's an axiom to start with,
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"Existence poses you outside of yourself."
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If you're not exposed, you don't exist.
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Living and non-living matter alike is thrown open to the elements,
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to other beings, to the sun, to the universe at large.
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It's vulnerable, susceptible,
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expropriated into the alien.
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Every foundation stakes its claim in the midst of a turbulent and terrifying openness.
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Living things are more thrown open than things inanimate.
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That's why they need shelter,
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why they need protective membranes, screens, and coverings.
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The planet we live on is wide open to the universe,
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yet it also provides life with its most basic and essential forms of shelter.
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The Earth's magnetic field, for example,
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which extends thousands of miles into space,
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acts as a shield that deflects the noxious gamma rays
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and charged particles of solar wind
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that bombard us from outer space.
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Without geomagnetism, our stratosphere,
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including the ozone layer, would be stripped away,
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and Earth would be unfit for life.
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The same applies to the layer of gases that encircle the planet,
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created largely by the metabolic labor of primitive microorganisms,
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our oxygen-rich atmosphere,
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burns up most incoming meteorites before they reach the Earth's surface,
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and protects the biosphere from ultraviolet radiation and cosmic gamma rays.
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Without it, life, as we know it on Earth, would not exist.
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Humans, for reasons unknown, are the most thrown open beings on the planet.
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We are exposed not only to nature, but also to history.
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That's why we need even more sheltering than other life forms.
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Ever since we have been human, we have covered ourselves with some kind of
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shirt, skin, or tunic, and these days face masks and coverings.
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We have sought out the shelter of caves, tents, and homes.
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We have made worlds within which to dwell.
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What is a world if not yet another humanly created form of shelter?
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A shelter exposed to its own endemic perils.
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I worry less about the bacteria and viruses that share our world than I do about our overreaction to them.
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In fact, I worry that our worlds may get so over-engineered
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that they'll end up detourrestriallizing humanity and rendering us a cosmic in nature.
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What do I mean by that? I mean that we would cease to be a refraction of the cosmos,
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would cease to share as destiny as it were.
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In Walden, Thoreau writes, "The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions."
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I don't subscribe to that view yet I do believe that the universe offers itself to,
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and even calls out for, our witness.
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I've never understood the lament endlessly reiterated by modern thinkers
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that the universe is indifferent to us.
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Who asks that it be otherwise?
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We have family, friends, and firefighters to care about us.
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The universe does not exist to love, afflict, or redeem us.
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It exists to throw us open and expose us to what exists.
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Everything comes to us from this opening we call the universe,
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and you can't ask for a more generous giving than that.
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Another thing I'll never understand is the distinction between the terrestrial and the extraterrestrial.
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Every atom in our bodies and on our planet has stellar origins.
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Every time we see an object, a landscape, or light reflecting off a body of water,
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we have a star to think for that.
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At its most basic level, life essentially refracts the sun,
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either through photosynthesis or through photo receptors in our sensory cells and organs.
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So yes, we are a solar as we are terrestrial in nature.
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And if we believe Nietzsche's zero-thrustra, our sun needs us as much as we need the sun
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because we shine its light back to it.
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You all remember the scene?
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As zero-thrustra prepares to descend to the human world from his mountaintop,
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he turns to the east and asks, "You great star, what would your happiness be if you had not
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those for whom you shine?"
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The question of all questions, what would your happiness be if you had not those for whom you shine?
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Aristotle defined happiness as the natural accompaniment of unimpeded activity.
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According to that definition, stars are happy to the extent that they slowly burn their vast
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reservoirs of nuclear fuel in an ongoing blaze of light.
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Yet, zero-thrustra reminds us that there is more to stellar happiness
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than the exothermic processes that keep stars in being,
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and that maybe we have something to do with it.
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Speaking of which, how about we take a trip to the sun?
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How about we find out just how solar we are by going there ourselves, we for whom the great star shines,
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rather than letting the sun always come to us?
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Those of you who listen to this show, the entitled "Epinions Brigade"
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are spaced out enough, I think, for such an expedition.
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So let's all take a deep breath and then climb onto the intergalactic ship
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of entitled "Epinions". The ship is made of thought, from far away as Jupiter's sulfur mines,
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way down by the methane sea. We have set the controls for the heart of the sun. Here we go.
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We set the controls for the heart of the sun.
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Open the mountain, watching the watch out,
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breaking the darkness, breaking the great fire.
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One to the least, one to shine down.
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Love is the shadow of the bright and the sky.
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[Music]
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Having passed through its corona, its photosphere, its convection and radiative zones,
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we have arrived in thought to the inner core of the sun.
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Here at the heart of the star, the temperatures and pressure levels are unimaginably intense,
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intense enough to squeeze two protons together. Only under the most extreme conditions
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will two positively charge protons. Overcome their natural repulsion and succumb to the indignity of
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fusion. When protons are squeezed together, they release a tremendous amount of energy.
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Exactly how much is determined by Einstein's famous formula, E equals MC squared,
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energy equals mass times the speed of light, the speed of light being 186,000 miles per second.
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For some reason, no one knows why. The weight of two fused protons amounts to 99% of their combined weight.
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It's a law of nature, not a consequence of a law of nature, that two protons lose 1% of their
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mass when they fuse. Multiply that 1% by the speed of light squared and it equals the staggering
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sum of 34 billion something of energy. The visible universe, along with all life on earth,
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owe their existence to this ongoing 1% loss of mass in the internal activity that crushes
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protons together in stellar interiors. E equals MC squared may be the most elegant equation in the
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history of science, yet its equal sign masks the enormity of the violence that converts mass into
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energy at the center of stars. That conversion engenders massless quanta of light called photons.
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Let there be light said God and there was light. Well, not exactly. Light has anything but a sudden genesis.
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The photon released by nuclear fusion has a long and errant way to go before it actually becomes a
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form of visible light. The estimates among astrophysicists vary wildly, yet it takes anywhere from
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170,000 years to many millions of years for a photon to make its way from the sun's core to its
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radiative zone and from there to the churning gases of its convection zone and finally to the
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photosphere of the solar surface. Its odyssey could not be more arduous because at every turn,
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the photon gets absorbed and re-radiated by the atoms it interacts with.
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That's why astronomers refer to it as the photons drunken walk through the body of the star.
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A poet might compare it to a gestation. I would compare it to a penance or mortification.
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Given that the photon encounters nothing but obstruction in its outward drive, so much so that
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by the time it completes its journey, it emerges at the star's surface in a bruised and battered state.
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No longer a high energy gamma ray but as a much weaker ultraviolet and infrared light.
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Let there be light and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years later, there is light.
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Nothing could be more antithetical to the photons drunken walk to the sun's surface
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than its subsequent rectilinear dash through interstellar space at 300,000 km/s.
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That is the miracle of the sun's surface or photosphere. Free at last, free at last,
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for the photon, or so we imagine, freedom means traveling through the universe in a straight line
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at the speed of light. But who is to say whether this luminous freedom realizes the photon's dream,
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the photons tell us, or whether the photon, in fact, has some other reason did.
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Does its release from the body of a star represent a new birth of freedom or merely the elimination
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of a waste product? In the latter hypothesis, the gamma ray born of nuclear fusion
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fulfills its intended purpose in its terrible fight to make its way out of the star's interior
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because without this centrifugal energies produced by fusion, that is to say without the
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counter-pressure of gamma rays pushing to get out of their interiors, stars would collapse
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under the influence of gravity. So maybe the photon fulfills its telos not when it becomes visible
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light, but in its drunken walk through the star's interior. One way or another, whether the photon is
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released from the surface as a bird from a cage or merely as a form of exhaust, the visible world,
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as we know it, has its origins in the exothermic processes I've been describing. Note that I
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say as origins, not its end, for there is more divisibility than the constant stream of photon sent out
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by the star's photosphere. If stars did not have those for whom they shine, they would not only forfeit
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their happiness, they would no longer even shine. Let's follow our solar photon on his brief journey
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from the sun's photosphere to planet Earth, a journey that takes exactly eight minutes and 20 seconds.
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If on its course, the photon happens to find its way to your eyeball, then a new stage in its
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odyssey begins. It first passes through your cornea, then through your lens, and then onto the retina
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at the back of your eye. On this thin layer of tissue with its light sensitive nerve cells,
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the photon impinges on either a cone or a rod, which converts the packet of light into an electric
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impulse that is conveyed to your brain by the optic nerve. Once it reaches your brain,
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the photon's trek comes to an end, its massless packet of energy generated by the fusion of
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atomic nuclei now gets absorbed into your living matter. In truth, while the human eye is sensitive
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enough to detect a single photon, it requires a plurality of them before the retina will actually
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send a message to the brain. That said, about half a billion photons enter the cornea of the human eye
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every second, and half of those actually reach the retina and enter the brain as electrical
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impulses, bringing with them a flood of kinetic visual images from the so-called external world.
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What this continuous intake of sunlight, bouncing off objects means, is that a considerable
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quotient of our organic substance, as well as our psychic life, is essentially solar in nature.
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The most intimate recesses of human vision and selfhood connect with the deepest interior of the
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sun through the photons that traverse the distance between them.
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Our daily incorporation of this never-ending stream from the sun's roiling surface is so fundamental
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to human vision, so fundamental to our mode of being, so fundamental to both our material
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and spiritual lives that it cries out for a name. I will call it Arthurian Intimacy.
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Theia was the Greek goddess of light, in particular of the ether or shining blue of the sky.
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Helios, Selene, and Eos, Sun, Moon, and Dawn were born of Theia's union with Hyperion.
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So every time an extraterrestrial photon reaches us from her domain, we receive the goddess into us.
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I could phrase this differently by saying that the human eye is an aperture through which the light
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enters the body sweetly. I'm alluding here to Cavalcanté di Cavalcanté,
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who is a shade that Dante meets in Inferno 10, the Circle of the Heratix,
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where Cavalcanté inquires of Dante after his own son Guido. He wants to know why Guido,
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a fine poet, and a good friend of Dante's, is not with him on this extraordinary journey through
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the afterlife. Dante offers an ambivalent response which leads Cavalcanté to assume that his son
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is died, and he reacts in sorrow, exclaiming, "Is he no longer alive? Does the sweet light no longer
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strike his eyes?" The Italian for strike is Fierre, from Fierida to wound. Does the sweet light
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no longer wound his eyes? Eyes are the open wound, the volness through which the sweet light
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plays on our world vulnerability. Like the arrows of Eros, we crave more wounding. On his deathbed,
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good they could not open his wounds, that is to say his eyes wide enough for the photo stream he
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was about to lose, and he called out for lique, merlique, light, more light. And even if his last words
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were less striking than that, it seems that he said in fact opened the shutter so that more light may
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enter. Good then, the hypesisterion, aspirin, and lover of colors was calling out for more
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thayon intimacy. I have defined the human condition as sheltered exposure. It is above all the
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sun to which we and other life forms on earth are exposed. The sweet light wounds are eyes. This,
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despite the geomagnetic field, and the planets atmosphere, both of which protect us from the more
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destructive effects of the sun's radiation. The solar blaze bears down on us with enough intensity
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that we are obliged to seek out additional shelter from our overexposure to it.
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I refer here not only to the risk of thermal scorching, but to the existential condition of exposure
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in general. Exposure to the light of the public world, for example, or to the celestial
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immensity above our heads. We are not altogether at home in such openness, otherwise we would not
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associate home with a roof or the roof space of interiority. A way or protected from what the Irish
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poet Desmond O'Grady calls the "Lights agony." Be it the light of the sun or the light of history.
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O'Grady calls it that in his poem "Pillotalk," which recasts in lyrically condensed form the
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return of Odysseus to his wife and their matrimonial bed chamber on the island of Ythaca.
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And out of the lights agony leaving behind all past destruction. Let's lie us down again on that
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old bed, steadfast under the bamboo and seaweed ceiling, opening glad white arms to one another.
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Then let me tell you all that story that's the skill of survival in the daily struggle.
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The blows given the beatings taken of wandering for years and of winds and losses in the search
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not to end a destroyer. While I watch over you, let down your long hair to shadow your shoulders
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before sleep, for all this place shall break and fall apart. Should you go absent?
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The arms are wiped because they've been sheltered from the burn of a Mediterranean sun.
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And shadow here stands for asylum from both the sun and the human history that takes place under
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its glare, or what Hanahir had called the light of the public sphere. Yet even under the bamboo and
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seaweed ceiling, they are slips into the room through its windows and shutters and open door
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as well as through the sleeper's dreams. And let's not forget that the old bed steadfast under the
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bamboo and seaweed ceiling was carved by Odysseus into the trunk of an olive tree that has
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its roots in the foundation of the house. It's thanks to the sun that the olive grew to its great size
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and thanks to the sun and the miracle of photosynthesis that the ceiling could be made of bamboo
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and seaweed in the first place. The very matter of the house speaks of our sheltered exposure
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and exposed shelter and that is a condition we share with all the other living tenants on our home
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planet this very strange third stone from the sun. This is Robert Harrison for entitled opinions
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Happy summer stay well.
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♪ ♪
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♪ ♪
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♪ ♪
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♪ ♪
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♪ ♪
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♪ ♪
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♪ ♪
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He's a beauty bird
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How deep he's got this rice
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He's got this rice
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Oh, feel the promise we heard
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Now, the stage will burn
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The rest of the world's gone
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Forever, that's what we're looking for
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One, two, three, yeah
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He's got this charlotte
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He's got this charlotte
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Whoa, two, three, yeah
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He's got this charlotte
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Whoa, two, three, four, yeah
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He's got this charlotte
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He's got this charlotte
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He's got this charlotte
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♪ ♪
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♪ ♪
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♪ ♪
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It doesn't show, it doesn't show
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It doesn't show, it doesn't show
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It doesn't show, it doesn't show
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It doesn't show, it doesn't show
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It doesn't show, it doesn't show, it doesn't show
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He's gonna fly, he's gonna fly
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He's gonna flying, he's gonna fly
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That's the stuff that the kids want
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It's the stuff that they want
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I mean, it's the fight, it's the fight
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That's the fight, it doesn't get coming
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He's gonna fly, he's gonna fly
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He's gonna fly, he's gonna fly
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He's gonna fly, he's gonna fly
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He's gonna fly, he's gonna fly
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He's gonna fly, he's gonna fly
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He's gonna fly, he's gonna fly
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He's gonna fly, he's gonna fly
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(upbeat music)
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(buzzing)
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