marginalia-1224-3

Marginalia (Our Only Heaven)

The Art of Stephen Nowlin

Nature is Space (excerpt)

Nature is space, from
here to over there.
It's the airy in-between
through which we pass
to arrive at something.
It's wandering from the
bedroom to find coffee
and the morning paper,
it's the train commute to
the other end of the line,
it's pushing open a door.
It's everywhere we go,
fly, swim, dance, crawl
and fall — and what we
evade, sit on, step over.
We avoid walls and
the edges of cliffs.
We're skilled experts,
dancers in a maze
of choreography,
getting around. We
learn to know truth
and our trust rises to
a belief — no matter what
else we may say we
believe in, our actions
pledge allegiance to
our true belief: Nature.
We worship our corner of it
in unceremonious practice
every time we start the car,
board a jet, ride an
elevator, or escape
falling down the stairs.
By gravity we're stuck
to the surface of an
orbiting spherical satellite
of a hydrogen-fusion star
floating in a space vacuum,
just as sure as we pour
milk on our cereal.
Nature is space, our cradle.
Our mystery, our evolution,
our only heaven.

* * *

Image: James Webb Telescope, Globular Cluster M92 (NIRCam Image)
Original data and processing: NASA, ESA, CSA, Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
Archival pigment print, 62 x 74 inches (mounted).

 

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Stephen Nowlin is a Los Angeles based artist, curator, and writer. His Chapel Studio practice probes astronomy, cosmology, and ways of knowing. The Studio borrows its name from structures of meditation and reverence but has nothing to do with churches or religion, or fictions of the so-called supernatural. It's a place to ponder and make, as science shapes our knowledge and embrace of the natural universe.
For more at Chapel Studio.

©2024 Stephen Nowlin
©2024 Publication Scene4 Magazine

 

 

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