THE SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM
207-780-4249 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.