The Arc of the Sun

The Arc of the Sun

I just noticed as I sit here in my office at my glass-top curio table, that the sun now rises further south and thus, in the live oak tree that sits on the very top of my little hilltop here in Escondido. This is convenient for me since earlier in the summer, the sun would rise further north and shine into my eyes as I sat her, requiring me to use my automatic shade to shield my eyes. I should also add that I am watching MSNBC this morning, something I have gotten out of the habit doing lately in the morning since I feel that I get alerts and news overload all day long and do not need to start my day there. But this morning is different. The news is flooded, as I knew it would be, by news of President Trump and the First Lady having contracted COVID-19 as reported last night at 1:30am by the White House (only beaten by a few moments by the @realTrump tweet. When the sun momentarily hit my eye through the branches of that live oak and I noticed the advancing trajectory of the sun, I took a moment to look up the arc of the sun here in San Diego. Naturally there are websites that graphically and interactively show you the arc of the sun anywhere on the planet on any given day and time of the year. While there may be micro adjustments of the sun’s position for any given year since as we all learned in earth science, the orbits of the planets are not spot-on exact, but have a certain amount of variance due to celestial body forces like gravity. But otherwise, the sun is pretty predictable.

The obvious juxtaposition I am angling towards here is the somewhat trite observation that the world, the Earth, the Sun and the Universe all go on despite the bullshit that I am watching on MSNBC. And as much as I like MSNBC and feel that they are more balanced than lots and lots of other cable news, especially the arch-enemy Fox News, they are still in the business of spinning information into news and stories to keep eyeballs on the screen. So, my observation about the juxtapositioning is that the stability of the Universe is contrasted to the maneuvering and machinations of man, which are the fodder for the machinations of journalists for first the immediacy of cable news, then the intermediate step of fascinating news articles and stories, and finally the packaging and branding of these stories into books. I suspect that much as those magazines that have focused on politics (NY Times Magazine, New Yorker, Atlantic, Vanity Fair, etc.) have thrived (I just renewed my New Yorker subscription this morning for another year), the political commentary and tell-all book market has perhaps revived an even larger portion of the publishing industry. It’s all eyewash to the Universe.

With the cooling weather (not really the case here this week, but Autumn approaches nonetheless), the ants have largely disappeared where they were all over the place a few weeks ago as they enjoyed their last summer Hurrah. I know I have likened Republicans to ants, but the truth is that to the Universe, we are all, regardless of political orientation, just ants running around with seeming purpose when the bigger picture is not in the least impacted by the most aggressive actions of the ants. The sun still rises in the morning and sets in the evening and it marches across the sky day-by-day moving from one end of the polar spectrum o the other. It has done so for 4.543 billion years and may do that for billions of years more. I know that we ants who watch MSNBC think it may end sooner if Trump wins or steals the election and Fox News watchers think it may end sooner if Biden wins or defrauds real Americans in another thirty-two days, but it ain’t so. We may imperil or bankrupt one another, we may even go crazy and blow each other up in small or large number, but that damn sun will probably continue to rise and fall each day on the arc that has been determined by forces far greater than our political inclinations. I only say probably because the one thing that we ants have proven we can impact is that we do seem to have the collective power over time to destroy the natural protections offered life on Earth by Mother Earth. Ants will be ants and the morsel of the moment always seems more important than the eternity of the species. It is conceivable that we may tweak the Earth so that the sun doesn’t just rise and fall within the same old arc, but that it does so with greater or lesser intensity thanks to our modification of our atmosphere.

Life is very fragile. Our fragility can be witnessed by the blood and flesh that cannot withstand attack by a microorganism like a virus. It can be characterized by the infinitesimally narrow temperature range that allows life to exist on this planet. Even without the ants’ contribution to the situation, scientists say we may go out of that zone within 1.5 billion years. If that is so and we have no viable solution for that, we are then 3/4 of the way through our lives as a species. They say that humans’ lifespan in whole is 79 years. That means we are 60 years old as a species and in the sunset of our universal existence. That actually doesn’t sound so awful. I am almost 67 now and even if I add the few added years for more affluent humans, I am more like 82% of the way through my life. I bet it seems more dramatic to my five-year-old granddaughter. But then again, even if she lives to 120 years (some suggest that as possible now), it really isn’t her problem either. In fact, she is far more impacted by what happens in the Trump/Biden Battle Royale than by the withering of the ozone layer or the hiccups of the Universe.

Therein lies the the reality of the success of the cable news industry (not to mention all those spot-on magazines and publishers). Our next footstep is so much more important to us than the millennial footsteps of those who come after us. Some can think in terms of their children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren, but few can fathom or show concern for the existence of the species as short a span as a few hundred yeas from now much less millennia forward.

Yes, the arc of the sun will march onward here in San Diego for a billion or more years, long after the “immortal” words and thoughts I scribble down today on the internet have faded like sand on the beach. And here is the funniest thing that occurs to me on this sunny morning; long after I and my descendants are gone from this Earth, when the sun rises on October 2nd in year XXXX, it will still rise on the horizon more or less where it does today. That live oak may or may not be there but the rocks and boulders in the foreground will be there if only a bit more worn down through erosion. And I am reasonably sure that the other thing that will still be here are some future generation of very similar ants, still going about their daily business as though it was the most important thing in the Universe.