Detouring Writers Roadblock

Thank you, Linny, for the photo pick to our now 3rd Writers Block challenge! It's an awesome choice and elicited a wonderful variety of writing styles by Saffron, yourself, Jasmin, Kimmie, Jenny, and myself. If there is anyone else out there wishing to participate, please do; the more the merrier! :)

I thoroughly enjoyed reading these works and thank each of you for being vulnerable enough to share with us the lovely fruit of your unique personal vision quests! *Readers, your feedback is greatly appreciated and goes far toward inspiring the future growth of not only this project, but it's also an essential element to the success of any community!



Is somebody else having a Big Bang in Lit tonight?

Since he staggered from the primordial soup, man has gazed in spell-bound awe at the night sky’s breath-taking beauty. In moments of reflection he has searched its silver silence for answers to his most profound questions, only to find more questions. Even today, the sheer scale and beauty of the Cosmos still overwhelms our comprehension, its myriad twinkling stars continue to taunt and tease us and yet the questions it poses define who we are. In wonderment we struggle to understand: what does the Cosmos consist of, who made it and when did it begin? Who can stare up into the heavens and not succumb to the sense that there must be a greater being?

In unlocking the universe’s secrets, science has simply multiplied a thousand-fold the profound, almost religious wonder of the original star-gazers. Galileo’s telescope only served to magnify its awe-inspiring grandeur and set us on the never-ending quest of cosmic knowledge.

Who could have foretold a hundred years ago that we ourselves are nothing more than star dust? Forged in nuclear furnaces, in unimaginable heat, the result of a massive, cataclysmic explosion, whose destructive forces heralded the beginning of time. To accept that before the Bang there was nothing, challenges every rational instinct.

We now know that we are billions of years older than the Bible claims and yet Creationists are unable to grasp that the breath-taking scale, stunning complexity and apparent serendipity of cosmic creation simply enhances the idea of a greater being instead of challenging it. Big Bang Theory points to a finite point in time in which the universe was created – just as the Bible proposed and yet some cannot comprehend the truth that God’s stellar majesty is simply a billion times greater than the wandering, flea-infested, goat herders could have ever imagined, when they began the allegorical quest to explain the existence of God.

We still grapple with many cosmic mysteries. Menacing black holes from which not even light can escape, how the bending of space-time results in gravity and the interchangeably of mass and energy all challenge our puny terrestrial understanding. Time which for hundreds of years has been sacrosanct and constant is now revealed to change from one observer to the next. Our infinite universe still prompts bewilderment, as does the knowledge that in the vast panoply of the Cosmos the light we see may well come from stars that died a million years ago. That life began as a singularity in which the mass of the universe was condensed to the size of a pea. That because of the Big Bang space continues to expand, which means when you go to bed tonight, you will never ever return to the same place you slept last night and that when you switch on your radio the crackling noises you hear are the reverberations of the Bang still echoing around Space. It’s even scarier to know that so vast is the universe, that statistically there will be someone exactly like you, with the same name, billions of miles away sitting in a place called Lit Chat enjoying a big bang with BigTitsAnalMom. Pause for a moment and reflect. Does this bring us closer to God, or further away as the followers of the itinerant goat herders would have us believe? Is Science and its interpretation of the Cosmos an incredible revelation or a heresy? One would do well to remember that the man who laid the foundations of the Big Bang Theory was a Jesuit Priest George Lemaître.

However, as we continue to study the secrets of pulsars and quasars and search for the seven dimensions yet to be discovered predicted by String Theory, there is the paradox that the secrets of the universe may well be unlocked deep under the Alps in the Super Hadron Collider. Despite all this, as we continue to struggle with the cosmic complexity of dark matter and even darker forces, one thing remains constant, linking us to every one of our forbears, the ability to reach out into the night sky and touch the face of God.

~Saffron~
9 May 2011

Hemorrage! Life bleeding death
Nebulas inhale the vast galaxy…
Stars’ heart and emotions’ last breath.
Zero Kelvin, time before returning
At this depth, equal force impressed
Mass fused, red dwarfs are burning.
Events, horizons, solar eclipse
An equal and opposite reaction pulses
Celestial bodies dance in ellipse
Equinoxes Herald the spring season.
Galilean Moons’ gravitational attraction
Brings Jupiter’s physical force reason.
Apex of galaxies inner stellar reactions
Transcend Andromeda’s embedded clusters.
Shell stars gather in broad spectrum
While novas react with vast explosions
Rising of Aries, time of ascension
Lunar phases like a game of ‘hide and seek’
Solstice carries summer without abandon
Cygnus soars escape velocity in the expanse
Time stands still, life begins, matter fuses
In the vacuum of space at Zero Kelvin.

~Kimmie~
7 May 2011

Winter dark on my walk home
Craning my head towards the sky
Twinkling dots greet my wandering eye

So silent they hang there
With subtle hues they look much the same
But stare long enough you soon will apprize

A sudden shift in color
Or a trick of the eye

Thoughts unbidden rush quickly

My mind tells me of long ago light
Born of star bursts, unimaginable might
Much like an explosion, the flash takes first prize

But hidden behind it
The real show begins
Only our vision incapable of taking it all in

With telescopes and scientists aide
The truth of those flickers
Can be dare revealed

Darting my eyes back to my path
Before my insignificance crushes me flat
Holding fast the memory of tiny sparks piecing the night

For sanity's sake I block out the truth
Of the beauty of heavens
And the terrible power
Above, around and within.

~Jenny~
5 May 2011

You know, I spent almost a week looking at this picture and trying to think of something to write, some extravagant piece that I could send out that would just wow others, but after reading each note that I wrote, nothing was ever good enough because...well, they weren’t about you.

Now my original thought was to do something about God and His divine works
or the Unknown, something so beautiful, but scary at the same time, and yet still...my mind always drifted back to you.

You are my moon, I need your light to guide me through darkness
when no one else is there, you save me from myself
and while sometimes you can get on my nerves like no other,
I wouldnt dare trade you in for another because
there is no one else that could possibly understand me like you do!

While I have discovered some things about you, I know your secrets are vast;
a work of art with hidden meanings and profound messages that only a certain few can fully understand and I'm getting there...slowly
I just need your patience and your willingness to lead me.

I know this was supposed to be about a picture, and it was meant to be profound & epic, and it probably should have been longer, but eh, this is me
a woman in love.

~Linny~
8 May 2011

Her eyes shined like rubies in the midst of a sea of red.
What perceived in the ocean could now be seen in the sky.
Above me and below me, we coexist.
Into the deep unknown, up up and away.

I stretch far away on this palette of colors,
As we lie next to each other,
I know no other.

Someone is calling, calling my name.
I am feeling her, feeling insane.

Her love is like a river,
Her lust is overtaking the sky,
Crossing mountains as we vie.

Tonight she rushes me,
Rushes me there,
Rushes me here,
I don’t know where I’m going,
Or where we will end up.

Her eyes shined like rubies in the midst of a sea of red.
What perceived in the ocean could now be seen in the sky.
Above me and below me, we coexist.
Into the deep unknown, up up and away.

She dons a cape,
She dons a smile,
She dons my heart,
For a long long while.

I am here, I am there,
We are together,
Forever.
In a fleeting moment,
In midst of that sea of red,
With the shine of rubies,
And the mountains we move.

~Jasmin~
7 May 2011

My Universal Truth

I see red
Shifting from its prior state
Flaring brightly, seeking knowledge
How it weeps in the powdery clouds
Blowing tears amidst gray dew
To the shape of my heart
Once vacant, then filled, fading now
To forget-me-not blue

I see more red
Growing vivid, intense
Born of love fearing hate
Born of hate searing love
For passionate passions-sake
Swirling turmoil and chaos
At odds with vast vapors of peace
In tender star-studded nights
We subconsciously kiss
Random spaces once missed
For important future flights

I see Blue
Royal veiling the atmosphere
We are small, we are many,
Collective sum to a whole
I cry out simple plea, oh please!
Shelter our individual ignorant hides,
Transform our mistakes into Earthy pride
Let us not spat upon this throne
Of amazing creation!

I see multiple hues
Swollen reds, puffy blues
Tossing balls of confusion
Through silent explosions
White noise in black holes
Dancing an eternity,
Or tenfold eternities
Awaiting discovery
Of how each generation acts;
Whether they’ll form a pact
With believers or non-believers,
Whether they’ll get sidetracked
By large groups of free thinkers
Philosophers, Scientists, Zealots, Poets
Whose souls aptly realize?

Beyond the smoke and mirrors
Of facts and suppositions
Stark answers a reflection:
We are nothing in the greater scheme
But we’re something, aye, everything
When, from each face of humanity
Cast throughout the millenniums
All our tiny speck dots combined
Form pure images of God.

~Camille Cheek
7 May 2011