Outside the small, rounded square window | Night and Day
I still remember the first time I felt ever so small, as I gazed into the vast, open sky in the dark. It was a night plane and I was woken at night for no specific reason. I sat by the window seat in silence, reluctant to go to sleep; there were sounds of the engine, rather mechanical, of people’s rustling, low voices of speaking and even a bit of snoring in the distance. One of the airline crew members may pass the narrow aisle from time to time. Then I decided to look what’s outside the window. At that very moment, I was stunned. The stars were so reachable and the sky was so static. I saw stars as big as a bowl; I saw a galaxy, which might be our Milky Way; I saw white, glimmering diamonds of stars set on the infinite darkness as if there was nothing. The universe was quiet, maybe too quiet compared to what was happening in the plane. A baby was woken up and she was crying; the mother was lulling her; some men at the front was adjusting his seat. Those millions of minor actions seemed to be so small and trivial at the time. Imagining that while we are sitting down reading, or busy with working, running between meetings, the whole universe in which we are nurtured, is relatively slowly undergoing events like exploding supernovas, or emergence of a new sun. For us, those are long processes; but for the universe, they are merely fireworks that last for seconds. How short our lives are! How small we are compare to the universe! But then again, we must never think low of ourselves. We are great in many ways.
In the morning, there are clouds, white clouds and blue skies—something really common, but different up there. Dancing clouds soft as if they were made of silk. But I don’t know, I’ve never felt the clouds ten thousand meters up the sea level. I’ve always wanted to touch them. Sometimes they are in a pattern of dots. Lots of small, round-shaped clouds aligned in an organised way. I heard that in some instances, it is caused by the tiny unstable shifts of the Earth’s electromagnetic field. Sometimes I see clouds like the lake without a ripple. A solid immense piece of white clouds resembles a huge mainland but we all know people cannot walk up there. I dream of what it’ll be like walking up there; how does the clouds feel. It must be a wonderfully new sensation for me, for everyone. I imagine it will be like touching the cold steam.
☝︎A piece I found suitable as background music for the observation I described. ☝︎
