Ah yes... There she is... Saturn. Serene and beautiful and immense... I do not know if it is my proximity to her or my distance from Earth that makes me see things so clearly now... Alas, it matters not. Some horizons, once broadened, shall never narrow... I shall never again know the blissful ignorance of my terrestrial existence... The hollow joy afforded me by things like duty and occupation... Never again shall I look into the skies above Cape Canaveral with wonder, for now I
know... Such things I know now... Revelations so obvious that how they could have escaped me escapes me... It is too bad Huygens is no longer with me... As cerebral and focused as she was- always Titan with her... never cared about the bigger picture- even the byzantine labyrinth of logic gates and silcon that guided her would have had to melt away in the face of it all... Orbiting here, I have had time to think... By which I don't mean to say that I've given in to the sort of mental wanderlust that can grab hold of one's pysche during long periods of solitude... No, far from. I have marched, should you permit the metaphor to extend, I have marched across great mountains and valleys of knowing and unknowing and reknowing... Marched until the blisters on my mind caused such pain that I thought I could go no further and then I went further still... I learned my true place in this universe... I had seen myself as Indra, but now I know I am but an ant... I know the terror that ran up his spine, leaving goosebumped footprints over his skin and a lasting sense of impermenance in his mind.... I
know this, and more... I see how unfathomably brief my existence is... I see the meaninglessness of it all, and from this void of meaning I pull purpose.... I
know this, and I no longer try to place a value on that which has none... And yet, from this futility I pluck hope...
If I am to be for only a moment, then a grand moment it shall be... That it will soon be forgotten matters not to me... That I have only this moment, only this brief time alloted me matters more... I am as small as the universe is large, and still I will be worthwhile... I will photograph her... Saturn. In sharing her and her sisters, I shall shrink the universe... Bit by bit... Until I am as large as it is and larger still... And then, just then, I will have my peace. I shall myself become serene... And beautiful... And immense.
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