Parallax

The first collection of words from my Auckland Grammar School days that I dare publish



I was 16, working on SAT and was confident in neither English (after all, too illiterate, to be precise) nor Chinese. While also consuming an apple, I wrote this in front of a picture of the milky way, taken by Nick Risinger.
...

"When you get yourself able to be staring at a really clear shot or 'portrait' of our Galaxy," she said," should a feeling come to you that they are sort of 'alive' and contented with the 'charm' of being all on the move?"

I didn't quite reply her in the way she could hear, but surly I replied.

While I manage to move lips, a feeling soon comes that I could be moving, like them, or maybe not in the the way as she stated, at billions of kilometres per hour, standing at the face of the picture, flying into something that remain calmly unchanged.

...

I wasn't able to pull my thoughts back as she began her further comment, "isn't it strange?"

"- What?"

She stops me from moving any further, "Here, within the world's sight, most of the things are moving at their extreme, maximum rate, gathered only to create such a still scene."

However, they are somehow different. Should you just stand here and feel the parallax as if you are really moving to browse the Stars' identities?

"Why not?" Moving a step closer, she nearly touches the glass panel of that picture.

"Here, specks of dust can be seen. We are about to know how we are limited," she said. "The situation might be like the real practical observations --distance distorts what we get, bias in data that we didn't know much to handle--"

"Or equivalently they are not... you know? In terms of cosmology, and my poetry, stars and dusts are almost the same in representing randomness and insignificance."

...