It's Like, Galaxies

A galaxy is not just a million stars suspended in ethereal darkness -- try a billion. This soupe du ephemeral jour also includes other bits of "interstellar media" like gas and dust.

(If you ever happen to be kicking around the subject with your posse and need to refer to more than one, the technical term is "galactic clusters".)

According to those in the know, when the night sky is clear (particularly during summer nights -- excluding San Francisco), it's possible to see a stretch of stars that are - get this - located close to the center of the Earth's galaxy. That's right. Even though our solar system is a tiny dot in our very own Milky Way, we can see starry snippets of it because everything in it revolves around a magnetic core.

Of course we don't live in just any old type of galaxy; we live in a barred spiral one. This means that our galaxy's main body is circular with a center all lit up like a house on fire (a result of the aforementioned serious magnetic action). This shape also features "revolving arms" shooting out of the central mass of stardust. Basically, our galaxy shape is super symmetrical and looks cool. Not everyone lives in an awesomely shaped galaxy.

A galaxy by its very nature has wondrous qualities about it. Therefore, one might say its metaphorical antonym is a black hole. Black holes are fascinating but perhaps not as wondrous, except to astronomers and quantum physicists because they are a tiny bit more scary than sublime. This is why: they are spaces containing a gravitational pull so powerful that not even light - ¡light! - can escape. This is why someone, like my Dad, may occasionally drop a corn-infested joke about how they sporadically show up in a womens' handbags.

The "door" of a black hole is known as an "event horizon", through which items, matter, Rush Limbaugh I wish, are sucked right in, industrial vacuum style. An event horizon is a one-way door, though; nothing going in ever ventures out again. It's not unlike an anaconda and its meals of rattus and canus.

So you can imagine, with this preface, that when one likens one's feelings to the utter, incomprehensible massiveness that is a galaxy (1,000,000,000 stars, remember?) that those feelings are most assuredly very strong, and feel very profound to the proprietor of said emotions.

And now I give you Laura Viers. I haven't come across anyone who has usurped the concept of a galaxy to say so cogently something we've all felt -- and also applied a melody that results in a celestial union of lyrics and notes.

When you sing, when you sing
The stars fill up my eyes
Galaxies pour down my cheeks
Galaxies…they flood the street
Galaxies

When we dance, when we dance
Eels and sea grass float on by
I’m 10,000 leagues beneath the sea
10,000 leagues…beneath the green
10,000 leagues

When we kiss, when we kiss
Bears and boulders vibrate through the air
Gravity is dead you see
No gravity…all I need is beating red
No gravity…

Galaxies - Laura Veirs