The second is this passage from Les Miserables
The science of mathematics applies to the clouds; the radiance of starlight nourishes the rose; no thinker will dare to say that the scent of hawthorn is valueless to the constellations. Who can predict the course of a molecule? How to do we know that the creation of worlds is not determined by the fall of grains of sand? Who can measure the action and counter-action between the infinitely great and the infinitely small, the play of causes in the depths of being, the cataclysms of creation? The cheese-mite has its worth; the smallest is large and the largest is small; everything balances within the laws of necessity, a terrifying vision for the mind. Between living things and objects there is a miraculous reiationship; within that inexhaustible compass, from the sun to the grub, there is no room for disdain; each thing needs every other thing. Light does not carry the scents of earth into the upper air without knowing what it is doing with them; darkness confers the essence of the stars to the sleeping flowers. Every bird that flies carries a shred of the infinite in its claws. The process of birth is the shedding of a meteorite or the peck of a hatching swallow on the shell of its egg; it is the coming of an earthworm or of Socrates, both equally important to the scheme of things. Where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and which has the wider vision? You may choose. A patch of mould is a galaxy of blossom; a nebula is an antheap of stars. There is the same affinity, if still more inconceivable, between things of the mind and material things. Elements and principles are intermingled; they combine and marry and each increases and completes the other, so that the material and the moral world are both finally manifest. The phenomenon perpetually folds in upon itself. In the vast cosmic changes universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, borne by the mysterious flow of invisible currents, making use of everything, wasting not a single sleeper's dream, sowing an animalcule here and shattering a star there, swaying and writhing, turning light into a force and thought into an element; disseminated yet indivisible, dissolving all things except that geometrical point, the self; reducing all things to the core which is the soul, and causing all things to flower into God; all activites from the highest to the humblest - harnessing the movements of the earth and the flight of an insect - to the secret workings of an illimitable mechanism; perhaps - who can say? - governing, if only by the universality of law, the evolution of a comet in the heavens by the circling of infusoria in a drop of water. A machine made of spirit. A huge meshing of gears of which the first motive force is the gnat and the largest wheel the zodiac
I'm sorry, its long but i couldnt leave any part of it out, its so beautifully written. The bigness of the first video makes me feel small but Victor Hugo's passage points out the bigness of the small things and the interconnection between the big and the small. It makes me feel, as Kimya Dawson would say, grounded, humble and one with everything. In fact, here is another video - i couldnt find i video clip for her Kimya Dawsons song 'i like giants' but here is a cute animation
And finally, i was going through a box of old photos in my room and i found this.
This was taken on the Young Endeavour on 2005, i didnt take it, someone else on my trip did but i've forgotten who, the quality is bad because i scanned it from a picture that i printed from the internet, sorry. It makes me so excited to travel again, i cant wait to disappear into the horizon into the world that is so big and yet so small. Arrgggh eight days! I intend to keep this blog running as a travel blog while i'm away, with any luck the next post will be coming to you from Hong Kong.
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