Heroes Not Zombies

When I look at this photo I think of both seeds and stars. It looks like a constellation. I find myself gazing at it for ages seeing a pattern but not able to name it.

I’ve often wondered about that when I’ve learned the constellations in the night sky. How did a “W” shape come to be seen as a queen (Cassiopeia), and how did that other cluster of stars become “seven sisters”? It often seems that the imagined image is way more elaborate than the actual grouping of a handful of stars.

And yet, those patterns, once learned, can’t be unseen. Every winter I watch Orion rise in the East and make his way across the night sky to the western horizon, knowing that come late Spring I won’t see him again until next winter.

So when you look at these star-like seed-heads what do you see? Do any images form in your mind?

I also think there’s a nice symmetry between seeds and stars. Seeds, it seems to me, speak of the future. Every seed is full of potential. A potential which may or may not be realised at some future date. Stars, on the other hand, are so far away that their light takes many many years to reach us, so star gazing is a kind of witnessing of the past. As if right now, you are seeing what was happening on those stars many years ago.

But let me turn that around 180 degrees. Seeds contain the past, their genetic heritage is the result of millions of years of evolution and dozens of generations of ancestors. Stars, on the other hand, have been the source of imagining the future for many civilisations. Human beings have used the regular patterns of the movements of planets and constellations to know when to plant and when to harvest, to know how to navigate their way across the face of the Earth, and, also to make predictions about events in individual lives.

In both these views, seeds and stars stir both our memories and our imaginings.

I find that deeply satisfying.