Good evening, everyone:

A friend who had recently read a couple of my cosmological notes sent me an article from the most recent newsletter of the extraordinary essayist Maria Popova. The article describes a new children ’s book, called Ocean of Stars , written by Azita Ardakani. Written as poetry, the book traces the growth of stars across the universe as a metaphor for the wonder Ardakani felt during her pregnancy: a small universe growing inside the ocean of her body.

The book is accompanied by illustrations done by Rebecca Rebouché, who painted an image on a single seven-foot-long canvas and then broke it up into frames that became each spread of the book.

Here ’s how it begins:

Once upon a time, in a far away place,
darkness drifted, knowing no time.
Reaching for infinity,
only knowing beyond.

One day, in the web of inky
endlessness, it asked itself:
“Can I see you? ”

The darkness
waited and waited.

From there, a star appeared, and then another, until the small blue dot of Earth forms to “reflect the stars back to themselves. ” In turn, the starlight constellates out of the cosmic dust to settle into the earth ’s soil and clay,  becoming “everything ”:

A canal then opens, permitting the life that had been created to reach back into the universe.

The story ends this way:

Once upon a time, in a far away place,
darkness drifted and you drifted inside of it.

You are the wish
you once wished for.

The miracle of the universe and of childbirth as one – we are made of what comes before us, a magical process we didn ’t design and can ’t fully see.  

The power of understanding that one star can ’t see a reflection of itself – we come to know ourselves through others.

The realization that curiosity needs to be patient - the darkness has to wait before its question is answered.

Rip

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