the astronomer

the ever smitten star-gazer is in love with far-off gases. he breathes in decaying moulds, gets high on ancient tales. he’s a lonely scientist, of the ancient breed. what is macro, can be observed in tele, down the gullet of his mighty magnifying lens. and what is micro, can be observed in petri, slithering on agarose. and yet the galactic gaps, the small crevices, they fit within one single algorithm, a fractal base to all spiritual belief. discovering gaps in multi-verses, and feeding slime-moulds, breathing their spores, maybe seen by our gentle reader as a single experiment. “now wherefore stopp’st thou me?” you may ask. “the drop that wrestles in the sea forgets her own locality”, that is the answer of the poet, and the scientist. and we, gentle reader, we plead “me” in the cosmic scheme of  things. the astronomer is a good friend of mine, I can see him from here, in this tiny room overlooking the Old Kent Road. the astronomer’s powerful, arresting images are snapshots he takes of the multi-verse, petri dish to satellite, comet to the comical. his trusted advisor is a small talking water-flea. she’s very wise and she has published many books. her doctorate masterfully handled the subject of soul-theft, a theme upon which this manuscript in your hand (“glass bodies”, we like to call it) does indeed elaborate at length. I read in the news that hundreds of whales have washed off the coast of New Zealand, dead by some mysterious reason. the astronomer has probably seen this from his station on Europa, and himself spell-bound, is busy looking (professional lie-detector that he is), for a good guilt-by-association agent. waking up after an apocalyptic night, the astronomer has a gigantic hangover, like a wart growing on his forehead. He has confusedly dreamt about Lamia, and Mombie, and soil-scientists doing some field work on the shores of Orion, unreal readers doing their usual lie-detecting, and real-readers doing their salutary tea-drinking, and unexpected gardeners attending to the wedding guests. Upon a time, before the fairy broods… Thomas Paine collected common sense, and the Age of Reason might have shone. Now dark times in the future haunt the tripping astronomer, and responsibility gnaws him, just as Coleridge stood by, and cried out “slave-trade”, so the nekomata (a two-tailed undead cat) may come to overpower you, and then your body may rise again, spell-bound, and you may in turn perform the magical operation, you indeed may go from oppressed to oppressor. witchcraft in the future is pretty much the same, and zombies can be mothers, too. A revenant looking for new victims… “et vivo temptat praevertere amore; iam pridem resides animos desuetaque corda.” A scientist poet storyteller anthropologist, marketeer, teacher. The astronomer, and his water-flea. the ever wandering spirits of Echo’s bone are calling for the ending of “The Hunger”, where our dear departed come back to haunt our past abandonments.