“If you can see a thing whole,” he said, “it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives … But close up, a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful earth is, is to see it from the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is... See more

“If you can see a thing whole,” he said, “it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives. . . . But close up, a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life

... See more

Perhaps, down here on Earth, we so readily lose perspective because we spend our days on myriad distractions keeping us from feeling the blade of time press against our lives with the urgency of living. Nothing sharpens that blade like seeing the edge between day and night, the beautiful and brutal turning edge, as the planet rotates: