skinny
Nigh
- Joined
- May 30, 2010
- Messages
- 8,808
Ever seen that scene in Kubrick's 2001 where Poole has asphyxiated and is tumbling away from Discovery into pitch black foreverness of space? A few weeks ago I dreamed I was in that exact situation, but not dead - aware. Aware that this experience was all I was ever going to have ever ever again. Sensations of terror and panic and descent into black nothing with no end. I woke up, but my mind has been popped, blown a little out of shape.
My impression of the space of the night sky had grown from a childhood appreciation of a 2D veil of tiny lights into (during an overnight epiphany on weed ten years ago) a realisation of a multi-dimmensional grand orb-fest with colour and light and spheres and gasses and beauty with an educated ape's appreciation of relative distance between us, our stellar neighbourhood in this region of the galaxy and the shockingly far off inner reaches of the Milky Way. But it's mostly empty. If an astronaut were to lose their tether with their craft on what Sagan called the shores of the stellar ocean, there'd be nigh on no chance of recovery. It hit me with full force.
Friends I've told about my experience have nodded sagely and told me I experienced the Total Perspective Vortex. When I looked into that, I found it's from Douglas Adams' Hithchiker's Guide. My experience was bloody terrifying - perhaps a form of fiction, but a living one in my overworked brain. Existential vortex, more like it. Frightened shit out of me.
My impression of the space of the night sky had grown from a childhood appreciation of a 2D veil of tiny lights into (during an overnight epiphany on weed ten years ago) a realisation of a multi-dimmensional grand orb-fest with colour and light and spheres and gasses and beauty with an educated ape's appreciation of relative distance between us, our stellar neighbourhood in this region of the galaxy and the shockingly far off inner reaches of the Milky Way. But it's mostly empty. If an astronaut were to lose their tether with their craft on what Sagan called the shores of the stellar ocean, there'd be nigh on no chance of recovery. It hit me with full force.
Friends I've told about my experience have nodded sagely and told me I experienced the Total Perspective Vortex. When I looked into that, I found it's from Douglas Adams' Hithchiker's Guide. My experience was bloody terrifying - perhaps a form of fiction, but a living one in my overworked brain. Existential vortex, more like it. Frightened shit out of me.