Galacto-intolerance

In Lady Windermere's Fan, Oscar Wilde writes, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Are you looking at the stars? I don’t mean Beyoncé and Rihanna. I mean the heavens; celestial objects; stars. How long is it since you saw a real life star?

The word galaxy comes from the Greek for milk. Why? Galileo Galilei published his astronomical observations of the skies above Padua in 1610. One of his findings was that the Milky Way is made up of individual stars. How could people not know it was made of discrete stellar objects. Did people really think the Milky Way was some kind of aerial fluid? Galileo wrote that the light from the Milky Way was so bright that it cast a shadow on the ground. What if, back then, the light from all those stars was so bright, so solid, it really did resemble a smear of milk? 

Our night skies are now polluted with so much artificial light it has been estimated we are no longer able to see 90 percent of the stars we might once have seen. Our vision is literally clouded with light bouncing back to the ground off our smog and mists.  A particulate reflection of nothing in particular. How ironic that our post enlightenment age has brought darkness to our heavens. A luminous beauty is concealed from us. Our society has made us all galacto-intolerant. A split milk over which we should most definitely cry.

If you want to bask in the natural illumination, you've got to travel to a remote area where the darkness is deeper. Perhaps we all need to find somewhere profoundly dark and distant before we can see clearly again. To lose the reflection of our dissipated energies. And then, some of us can look up and see the stars. Got you lookin' so crazy right now. You and I. You and I, like diamonds in the sky.