Courage 1: A ‘Star-Word’

[...] and therefore I've experienced a quiet, isolated agnosticism - free of both strife and warmth. Submerged. Imagine me as The Nautilus-- a tired Captain Nemo with less ambition yet an even deeper longing. It's a nuanced contradiction.

Surveying the Mountains’ Tops

I wanted to find an answer for myself-- assumed everything would feel better when I could speak an answer without doubts. I probed the voids between stars billions of years old ... Orders of magnitude: 20 years to grow a person, 20,000 accreting a dune, 200,000,000+ to mold and mill-away mountains, 2 billion and more collecting gas into stars. Why? Why anything?

Wrestling the Anchor: Adrift

[from "Strange Orbit"] "When my eyes opened, I was swimming in perfect silence. There was no sound of bubbles rushing over my ears or the distant rumble of outboard motors. No muted calls from birds above the surface or the low grating of water rushing over boulders ... I swam through a translucent [ocean] of …