*THE SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM*




*207-780-4249 <207-780-4249>       www.usm.maine.edu/planet
<http://www.usm.maine.edu/planet> 70 Falmouth Street  Portland, Maine 04103
43.6667° N,                    70.2667° W Founded January 1970*

*               "Oh, the weather outside is frightful,*


*                 But the fire is so.....enough already!!"*



*THE DAILY ASTRONOMER*

*Wednesday, April 27, 2016*


*Maia's Platonics*


* Had I had my way, I would have crafted a structure fashioned of my first
few minutes on Taygeta Meadow, a name that I, myself, gave to that remote
wield.    I wanted to capture and embody every sensation that besieged me
when I set down on that forest encircled enclave.   The cooling touch of
moist grass blades against my palms.   The distant chorus of peepers
exalting to darkening skies: spring's rejuvenation made audible.
 Silhouettes of still barren trees cast against unbounded twilight.   Light
zephyrs redolent of our damp and awakening Earth.*

* I wanted to transmute dissolving time into tangible space: to return to
it at will and re-experience it anew at every visitation.     Alas, I could
not, so I merely commit my experience to paper.*

* Taygeta Meadow was merely one amongst the myriad sheltered and sacred
places that are tucked away within the vast, self contained universe of the
Lakes Region.     Like the universe, itself, its extent was uncertain, its
boundaries undefined; its purpose unclear; and its character supernatural.*

* On *

*April 29, I  convened a gathering of the Lakes Region Astronomical
Society.  Determining the meeting dates, locations and ensuring that all
members attend are my three principal tasks, as I am the society's first
Emperor.     These tasks I have yet again fulfilled.   As I remain the
society's sole member, I managed to have full attendance on Taygeta
Meadow.    This despite my having designated this meeting time and place
less than 24 hours ago. Unlike most astronomical societies, our gathering
times are not rigid, but instead determined by the cosmos itself.    So
much time has elapsed since the previous meeting as I didn't sense that any
were necessary.     Yet last night, as I lay in bed, I beheld an iridescent
dodecahedron as it emerged from the ceiling and hung suspended above me.
 It was a great fortune that I happened to be awake and my eyes were open,
for its entrance was soundless.   At first a dazzlingly bright point
appeared within the ceiling tile.  It grew at once to a hexagon of fluid
hues: alterations of emerald green melting into crystalline amethyst and
darkening into the Dantean crimson of lava flame.  All the while, it
protruded beneath the ceiling and slowly, almost imperceptibly, rotated: so
that in turn it presented each of its twelve sides to my view.    Each
facade pulsed through a beautiful array of color alterations.   I almost
perceived an attempt to communicate, as though the color changes were a
sequence*

* The next moment I recall I was immersed in a deeper darkness: an absolute
depth of blackness, unlike the bedroom darkness tinctured by the soft
streetlight glow passing through my curtains.   Still, I did not fear, but
was instead exhilarated:  imbued with a dynamic energy that made me
impervious to whatever perils this depth concealed.    I walked forth
undaunted and in time came to understand that I was moving through a
complex lattice work of passageways forged through the roots of Mount
Kyllini.   I cannot explain how I came to know my location.    The
dodecahedron must have infiltrated my mind and in so doing imparted
specific information to me.     Through these voiceless communications I
came to know of it, as well: at least pertaining to its purpose and
provenance, of which I shall not yet write.*

* I knew of Mount Kyllini, of course.   Of all mortal landforms jutting up
from our restless Earth it loomed large in significance, if not in extent.
 Here, in the very mountain I wandered, Maia once yielded to Zeus and from
this encounter sired Hermes, the light-swift deity of boundaries.  The
ageless god able to effortlessly maneuver through Olympus, Earth and even
the underworld, itself.   An immortal life of unconstrained freedom.   Yet,
I sensed that Hermes was incidental and that Maia, herself, was the more
important.   This belief was confirmed for I came upon the figures of
Vulcan and Maia.  He lustful and determined; she coy and elusive:  as
though Spranger's painting had become animate within the mountain root.
 They saw me not, and as I stepped closer, she faded into a luminescent
mist and he solidified into a stalagmite.*

* The mist diffused into a grey fog and from it arose the infant Pleaids.
  Eldest Maia, then Electra, Taygeta, Alcyone, Celaeno, Sterope and finally
the shameful Merope who would one day love Orion and as a consequence fade
into ignominious mortality.   Daughters of the sea nymph Pleione, guardian
spirit of all sailors, and Atlas, whose despairing groans resonated through
the mountain passes. Lamenting moans borne from his burden of shouldering
the world entire.      Before me, the daughters underwent a rapid
metamorphosis from children to women.  Their maturing bodies, clothed in
enveloping fog, were kneaded and tossed by winds issuing from distant
calderas.  They appeared to swim and dive, as though immersed in their
mother's sea.  Ultimately, they set down gingerly onto the unyielding rock
and gathered into a healing circle.    Their arms raised, they weaved the
air around them like filaments of silk so that a maelstrom of elegant,
intertwined spirals formed high above.  These shed a glow by which I saw
the crystalline cavern interior: the seemingly endless recession of
openings and rock forms casting yardarm shadows against the Pleaides'
luminescence.*

* I thought they were oblivious to my presence, until Maia, suddenly a
stooped over crone,  scattered a fistful of rocks against me.    Apart from
being offended, I felt this gesture one of the deepest intimacy, as though
she and I alone knew its true meaning.     The rocks arose from around me
and floated lethargically through the expansive cavern. Mesmerized, I
watched them recede into the distance until they vanished amongst the rock
facades of the cavern's interior.*

* I awoke at once and knew everything.*


* Afraid that I wouldn't retain this knowledge as I became more lucid, I
hastily found a pen and wrote "Maia's Platonics," on my arm. Later that
night, as I sat onto Taygeta Meadow, I saw the words, slightly faded, on
the skin.    Yes, I knew everything and for that reason I hastily convened
a meeting of the Lakes Region Astronomical Society.   Through my dream,
which I know was an astral transport to that renowned Greek mountain, I
learned that the secret was around Maia: the star, not the goddess who, at
this very moment, is living and re-living her life in ceaseless iterations
within Mount Kyllii's deepest corridors.*

* Another gathering, of beings far beyond us, convened around Maia, a star
with the Pleiades.  How long ago, I cannot say, but this coven of superior
spirits long predated the human species.    They were not indigenous to
Maia, a rather luminous and comparatively short lived star.  Instead, they
selected it as a their gathering place for it contains a world with a salt
flat, or crystalline, continent that under the fierce Maian light gleams
more brilliantly than almost any other planetary surface in the galaxy.
Alloyed with phosphorescent minerals, this vast flat plain exudes a
luminescent glow throughout the planet's four hour night.   It is said that
those who gather upon its fields at midnight as though they're enveloped in
an aurora.*

* There they produced a message for the galaxy.   Fashioned of neutrinos,
they produced the five perfect truths:  the Platonic solids    cube,
dodecahedron, icosahedron, octahedron and tetrahedron.    As Euclid
demonstrated at the conclusion of his 'Elements', these were the only
possible Platonics: convex polyhera composed of congruent convex regular
polygons.    A truth that any race in any part of the Universe would fathom
when it attempted to penetrate nature's secrets through mathematics.*


* Though their race progressed far beyond where our own current languishes,
they chose a pure and simplistic truth to cast into the Universe.     With
a technology that we cannot yet even understand, they set the neutrinos
into the five different Platonics.   They designed them to travel with
Hermes-like swiftness in space, but had them impede themselves in the
presence of others.    They cast them into the boundless black and
commanded them to be light in the darkness, but a solid on planets.   To
communicate its message, which I will never understand, and then maneuver
effortlessly through the world en route to elsewhere. I happened to be the
one to see the dodecahedron: as it happened upon our primitive Earth en
route to elsewhere.    Its brethren shapes soar through parts unknown: at
distant points throughout the Milky Way.   Immortal, they move through the
luminous spirals of the galaxy, never diminishing, never aging.  Now,
somewhere in the black between the stars.   I sat on Taygeta meadow all
night.    Sitting, but not sleeping; awake and aware and as intensely alive
as the Universe itself.  I tried to catch a glimpse of another one of
Maia's Platonics:  any of them that might pass through the cooling spring
air.      Though I saw nothing but stars, planets and occasional meteors, I
had an intuition that they were indeed out there.   Like faintest hint of a
candelabrum at the farthest reaches of a castle's corridors, they were
passing at my periphery.    I knew my search was in vain.     The next one
might not return for an unfathomable span,  Perhaps the cube in 12 million
years will pass unseen through the expanding Atlantic; just as the
icosahedron startled the early mammals 40 million years before.*

* I assert that I didn't sleep that night.    When the sun rose, I did, as
well...and walked stiffly back home to a deep sleep undisturbed by dreams.
   At 1:00 p.m. I awoke into a world ablaze with star fire and electric
with energy.*