WONDERFUL COSMOS.

^{let's set the mood...}

do you have a bucket list? can't say i have much of one myself.

while there's things i definitely look forward to in life, there's not a lot of things that i feel like i'd NEED to experience before i die.
i could DO without a partner, family, sex, fame, wealth, etc. cause, while all of that sounds nice, they all come with some sort of drawback. NOT that they're particularly undesirable for me, but you probably understand: if it comes, it comes; if it doesn't, it doesn't.

however, there is ONE thing on my list.

when you look up at the clear night sky, what do you see? depending on where you live, you might see something different. personally, i see a bunch of little white dots distant from eachother, hard to say which are stars and which are
man-made objects, but it's a pleasant sight to look up at, especially on the outskirts of town, where there's a little more stars. if you live in a very populous major city, you probably see nothing; nothing but the black-yellow void that serves as a background to numerous skyscrapers that you probably don't even know the purpose of. whatever it may be, it's highly likely that BOTH you and me... are not seeing everything.

industria, rievopltuon and its conequencs. (Funny)

mankind's achievements in conquering nature have been staggering. the cold is no problem, we have coal to heat us up. night is no problem, we have artificial lights to light up our houses and roads. ...and that unfortunately has its drawbacks.

while no doubt carbon emissions are a much, MUCH larger problem than light pollution could ever hope to be, the latter deprives me of a psychological need i've developed: to see the unobstructed, full night sky; with my own two eyes.

now, i'm no astronomy buff, but... WOW... what a... wonderfully-woven tapestry of little suns, worthy of hundreds upon thousands of endearing adjectives. the fact that this is out there? on the same pile of rocks that you and i trudge through our
day-to-day on? wow...

then i look back outside and are forced to face the reality that what i see out there is a pathetic imitation of this jpeg i'm looking at.

there's not a lot of places on earth like this. this specific image is from a telescope site in rural chile, but... i'm in poland. west of me are densely populated and developed countries, up to the very shore of the atlantic;
east of me, a raging war and authoritarian governments occupy any sites where the clear night sky is visible.
and even then, it's not like travel is cheap, especially out of country.

what's especially maddening is that i've seen clearer night skies than the one in my town, and i've been amazed by them, even if in comparison to this they were pretty much still nothing. so... just imagining seeing this myself... it makes me want to cry. cry tears of joy because of how astoundingly beautiful such a sight would be, and cry tears of anguish because i may very well never, EVER experience it.