astronomy lessons

Last Tuesday night, I made my way across to the Johannesburg Planetarium for the first "Introduction to Astronomy" course. I thought it would be about the same size as my Latin class at Rhodes: an older person who always wanted to learn this but never got around to it, some really smart students, maybe the odd science student dabbling in astronomy and me getting all misty-eyed about the awesomeness that is the Planetarium.

The courtyard was swarming with people: couples, students, solitary people trying not to look awkward in the throng, pensioners, married people holding hands as if the kids just left home and me, staring wide-eyed at the long queue in front of the registration table.

The course has been completely worth it. I have learnt about constellations, planets, eclipses (bookmark the 15 June, 2011. There is a total lunar eclipse and it is happening between 8pm and midnight), an idea of how big the universe is and how to find out when satellites will be crossing the sky. We also get to see fun little snippets NASA videos. There was one of a man trying to explain what zero gravity does to playing basketball (he could do five spins in the air before getting the ball into the basket. Which is actually quite tough in space as the ball just floats upwards out of the basket). There is another video about the different areas they could land their next Mars explorer: a robot called Curiosity. My favourite fact was that the wake-up call for astronauts on the space station is the Star Trek theme song. Life imitating art?

Sometimes, Astronomy even makes me think about other things that the stars and planets could teach us about life in general. What completely blew my mind last night was a little lesson on perspective and how two people can have a totally right, totally different answer, depending on the different places they are standing. If a person stands in the Southern Hemisphere, "looking up" (so to speak), the earth is spinning in a clockwise direction. If another person stands in the Northern Hemisphere, "looking down", the earth is spinning in an anti-clockwise direction. In other words, which way the entire earth is spinning depends on which part of the earth you are standing on. Learning this is - for me - one of the best examples to explain how the world is full of vastly differing yet almost all valid opinions: they are right from the perspective one has according to where one comes from. How can two people have different answers about which way the earth (the huge (compared to us) planet we live on) is spinning and both have the right answer? It is mind-boggling.

One has to say "almost" though. Every society or cultural group always has one or more (metaphorical) equivalents of the flat earth society. Some things can't be right no matter where you stand because the place where you think you are standing doesn't exist.

"Introduction to Astronomy": Learn about everything. No, really. Everything...

newness

So after endless headaches with the student loans department at Nedbank (NEVER apply for a student loan through them) and wading (telephonically) through incompetent Wits staff (and some super-competent ones it must be said), I am at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg beginning a masters degree.

Starting a masters (particularly in a university where you know almost no one) is a little like stepping onto a floating island. It's incredibly difficult to get on to a floating island in the first place (as any Irish legend will tell you) because they move away from you and are shrouded in mists or even deterrent storms. Once you are on the island, however, you find yourself in a lush and fertile landscape that may or may not be inhabited by a race of mischievous and subversive faerie.

So far, reading and researching (though in its current fragmented and disorganised form that no doubt resembles faerie witchery) has been incredibly enriching and rewarding. I read things every day that I think are wise and true, or deeply disturbing and unsettling or intriguing and inspiringly complex and uncompromisingly unresolved into a pat conclusion. It's beautiful. It's also an island. I don't have lectures with anyone else and my room is a colourful cocoon of organised self-sufficiency perfect for concentrated study. It is not conducive for meeting and interacting with other people.

So I've ventured out a little. I thought Joburg would be impossible to navigate without a car and that I would be restricted to the little oil-smelling complex of shops in the student "Matrix" on campus and a few lectures on early mankind or the discovery of new medication for malaria (or something). Actually, Braamfontein (along with the JoBurg and Market theatres and the Johannesburg Art Gallery) are right outside one of the exits. I started walking with (it must be said) some trepidation as true stories of violent crime and muggings have put the fear of walking anywhere in Joburg very deeply in my heart. There were actually lots of people from all over walking around, and I even found a good second-hand bookshop. This - it must be said - always warms my heart to any area. I even found a book of Sydney Clouts's excellent poetry. There are such carefully wrought gems I feel my heart move in my chest every time I read some of them. (A gripe of mine has always been that the idiotic ramblings about it by Stephen Watson were given so much weight).

And then I also went to a short, introductory session in the Johannesburg Planetarium. I have never been to one before, and I felt quite overwhelmed by a sense of wonder and joy at the sight of the stars shifting in a huge arc above my head. When they placed diagrams of the constellation pictures over the stars and I could finally see the connections I have been frustratingly blind to all my life it was a revelation. I learnt (and now you too, from reading my blog will learn) that all the constellations one can see in the Northern Hemisphere are inverted in the Southern Hemisphere. So don't worry if you can't put together a picture of Orion around his famous belt: he is upside down on this side of the world anyway.

Then last night I went to my first Bible study in years. I was both excited and apprehensive. Some Bible studies are exercises in hate and exclusion; you spend more time talking about how you shouldn't date people from other churches and how awful everybody else is than you do meditating on the humbling and endlessly meaningful love of the Mother and Father that is God. I have felt like a cornered mental patient that someone is trying to give a prefrontal lobotomy to at some of these meetings, and I have become wary of going to churches.

At this Bible study, however, I was not disappointed. All of us are from different countries in Africa (Cameroon, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Malawi oh and me, the South African) and from different churches (I know one man is an ordained Anglican priest but I still don't know what denomination the others are from. It was something that didn't come up) and we had never met before, but because we were all meeting together to pray and have fellowship together, in this context, the differences felt negligible. There was a lack of arrogance or posturing (this was no evangelical grandstand), and though I am the equivalent of a Christian newborn baby, the atmosphere was so gentle and accepting that I felt the good influence of spending time in God's loving presence every day had had on these people and the good they were therefore able to communicate to me. It made me hope that one day I too will be able to communicate a fraction of that peace.

Reading through this blog, I think one of the most common words I have repeated is "heart". Even in all this newness, and despite the fact I am but floating past everyone on an island a lot of the time, I realise that Joburg has a lot of heart. I'm sure I will experience the lows of living in this complex mix of a city, but I think that heart will sustain me.