How I Fell In Love With Space (Kinda Against My Will)
Oh Carl Sagan how you will always haunt me...
From stories from my dad loving space as a kid wanting to grow up to be like you only to have his dreams crushed and turned to dust because his eyes where shaped the wrong way.
From going to the planetarium in 5th grade and being amazed my breath taken away by the beauty and being scared at the same time. From looking in at the telescope at the planetarium to see by complete accident sun spots and solar flares happen in real time as I looked through the lenses of the telescope. To learning about Nebulas and being blown away by their beauty to this day to being after school for Battle of the Books when NASA Dropped the first ever black hole captured on photo and my teacher whipped our her phone and showed it me and my mom and the other girls on my team excitedly.
But space always scared me.
Its so big and wide and makes us seem so meaningless.
I remember seeing my first partial solar eclipse and watching the nasa footage inside my house. As we didnt have a good view.
I remember looking up at poluated filled sky's of Seattle Washington where you couldn't see the big dipper but could see helicopters more commonly.
On the last birthday I had with my Father alive the day before there was to be a total solar eclipse in the area we lived in Texas and so we went out on the lake that we live on and watched it I was floored when it happened no one could have prepared me for it. There is no words to describe the happenings of it
I remember my first reading assignment in college being works of Carl Sagan for my US Government class. The name sounded familiar but I couldn't put my finger on it now that my father had long since passed and my elementary school days of learning about the planets had been buried with him.
I choose the video first as it was the shortest in content. I cried. I became scared to open the full length chapter that I was expected to read by Carl Sagan Demon Hunted World Chapter 2 but I did. It wasnt required but I have always been one to want to go above and beyond and I felt I needed to so I did. It hit me like a gut punch in the chest.
When I was in my Intro to Pysch class and was learning about Freud the professor teased us that once we knew of him we would find him everywhere in all our classes. She was right of course he was in my US Government class now, he was in my Intro to Psych class of course and my Compostion 1 class. But he was Freud. Everyone knew about him before this. Heard about him before this. I was warned how he would pop up everywhere after this.
But Carl Sagan did something Freud didnt he popped into my personal life.
We must go back to a time i was just learning how to read in 3rd grade by reading the book Wonder by R.J. Palacio in the book Auggie's English teacher Mr. Browne has precepts which is a big theme in the book and its squeal Auggie and Me this in universe book "written by Mr. Browne" collecting his precepts was gifted me that Christmas after i was tutored all summer by my 3rd grade teacher and finally had learned how to read. As you can see there is 3 quotes though actually technically only 2 where truly written/spoken by Carl Sagan the first one has been misquoted by him and was actually written completely originally by the woman who was interviewing him at the time. I found this out as I choose to do my Compostion 1 final on the topic.
I didnt realize until studying for said final looking for quotes to use in the book that Carl Sagan was used and then it came back to me on Christmas Morning I was flying through the book and showed my dad the quote and he said "oh I love Carl Sagan." And I was not really paying attention haha. But it reminded me of something...
I opened my poetry books i was also checking for quotes to use in my Compostion 1 final and yes sure enough my first and one of my all time favorite poets Nikita Gill wrote about Carl Sagan writing a poem in honor of him. Though now that I thought about it and was now familiar with his concepts I knew she had used his concepts through out the book he was honored in "Where Hope Comes From" which i had bought in 2022 shortly after it realsed it came to my house after I got back from Orlando Florida bring back Covid for the first time. Irony as this book is about how the author delt with 2020. I was reading it (or reading as much as i could as having Covid makes me not brain power on) and asked out loud who Carl Sagan was and my Dad also laid up with Covid was like "I love Carl Sagan."
Her book "Wild Embers" also has a lot of Carl Sagan concepts in her poetry.
But I wouldnt make this connection until the end of the semester he had been with me all along.
So now Carl Sagan would come up in lectures in US Government from time to time as any reading does and he also came up in intro to psychology for philosophy.
Now its nearing the end of the semester and I need to pick something for me and my partners leading the lecture day so looking through the readings I go to the climate poetry section (note compostion 1 is other words for college English class and mine specialized in climate change and environmental justice) where the first poem i clicked on was called Earthrise by Amanda Gorman
I started skimming the work which started with a date which sounded suspiciously familiar and I quickly realized OMG THIS WAS THE SAME EVENT THAT WAS "A PALE BLUE DOT BY CARL SAGAN" IT EVEN REFENCES "A PALE BLUE DOT" OMG so of course I hit up my partner and was like we are doing this im familiar with the content already here's the video link and the chapter pdf file I read in US government I think it will help you.
And she was down.
I thought about it more and I couldn't help but worry some of my classmates wouldn't get the poem cause not everyone liked poetry or understood it well i mean I didnt start liking it until I started reading Nikita Gills works in 2021 when I lived in Texas for the summer and found the first copy of her work. So I asked my professor if I could add the video a pale blue dot to the reading requirements as I feel it would also add much need context to the story I was trying to share. She said yes.
The lecture went off great it was really well liked and I thought my love affair with Carl Sagan was finally over.
Then the bastard showed up for my Compostion 1 final making it like so much longer then it needed to be luckily there was not a max length 😅 as explained earlier I literally started crashing out mid writing my Compostion 1 final cause I realized Carl Sagan has ALWAYS BEEN IN DRENCHED IN MY GOD FORSAKEN LIFE I CANT ESCAPE HIM
After I had that crisis called my more adult friend who is also in college about it freaking the fuck iut because my life started feeling fake and like it was written by someone and she just laughed at me
I thought I was truly done with Carl Sagan so I opened Tiktok and was scrolling and what is this math stuff about the 4th dimensional space? Fell down a math physics rabbit hole and found a sci fi movie about it only to find out MOTHER FUCKING CARL SAGAN MADE THAT THEORY AS WELL
So I was like its 3 am i have my last lecture of college this semester tomorrow I need to go to bed so I go to bed and I wake up and go to my last lecture which is US Government fitting as my first lecture was also US government and you WILL NOT FUCKING BELIEVE WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT BUT THAT GOD DAMN MOVIE TIKTOK SHOWED ME LAST NIGHT ABOUT THE 4TH DIMENSIONAL SPACE AT THE VERY END OF GROUP PRESENTATIONS (which where about basically analyzing fiction for goverment shit I did HP and how you can tell JK Rowlling is a Bigot based off her world building) AND THAT ONE WAS THE LAST ONE SO WHILE EVERYONE WAS GIVING TEAR FILLED GOODBYES MY BRAIN WAS FALFUNTIONING BECAUSE CARL SAGAN FOUND ME AGAIN
If you think he would be done haunting me no he isnt my moots have accidently posted shit about him and im just banging my head in the corner. Then my second semester of college which I unfortunately didnt get to completely finish he showed up again in my Compostion 2 class I had the same professor on purpose and dragged that more adult friend then me to her class. So my mire adult friend was group 1 to host a lecture for class and you wont believe what she accidently choose as her writing fucking Earthrise by Amanda Gorman. She didnt realize I told her I did it last semester until after she did the lecture lol and I didnt realize she choose it until the day of class when I was like wait what did she choose again so I could read it right before the lecture .
Speaking of Earthrise then on my birthday Artemis 2 landed safely back on Earth and WE GOT PICTURES OF EARTHSET OMG I WAS SO EXCITED and it was a little later after my birthday my lecture was up I forgot what poem I picked but I went off about Artemis 2 more instead omg like I deadass went on Tumblr and was taking fucking photos from here and sending them to my classmates to analyze and talk to me about im deadass 😃 it was amazing.
