Transcience of the Amygdala

I grew up in a very flat place with lots of sky. The sea washed in by the King’s Lynn, grew Samphire on the marshes of New South Holland and stirred the shingles on Skegness beach. The land was very flat and there was lots of sky. I remember the sky, rolling clouds and winds. I read a lot of books and rode my bike a lot.

I dreamed of being an artist. I painted with oils for a while but my hand was not the hand of an artist. I read a lot more books and someone stole my bike but that was ok because by then I had a car and the beginnings of a family. I cooked food for the army, I restored antiques, and I worked in libraries telling stories and singing songs.

These days I play the drum, sometimes I dance. Occasionally I work in schools and I read a lot of books. These days the stories come to me in the form of dreams and I write them down as best I can. They are stories from the darkness of the night; strange and twisting word snakes writhing and thrashing in my head. Maybe writing them down will help to tame my stories so they don’t bite so much.

Let One Hundred Thousand flowers bloom.
Let the stars fall upon the beaches.
Soft is the whisper of the cooling universe.
Soft are the words…

SN 1987A was discovered by Ian Shelton and Oscar Duhalde at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile on February 24, 1987, and within the same 24 hours independently by Albert Jones in New Zealand. On March 4–12, 1987 it was observed from space by Astron, the largest ultraviolet space telescope of that time. Roughly 167,000 light years from Earth it represents a phenomenal illustration of the bridge between distances and time. Early man was beginning to cross continents when it’s light first left the Magellanic Cloud.

As we watch today we see a wonderfully elaborate pattern emerging. A central disk of energy is growing from the star heating the gases around to glow white hot. Meanwhile two conical energy spikes have been ejected from it’s poles, giving it the appearance of an hourglass. At the time of its explosion, it was one of the brightest objects in the night skies of the southern hemisphere. You could see it with the naked eye. On the Northern Hemisphere, something less loud and bright was happening. Something was quietly unfolding in the darkness. Something at first unseen was reflected in the events of the small hours of the 24th February 1987.