The Warmth of the Sun

My dear friend Elliot is starting a print magazine which will be named something like The Barton Springs Reader for a local readership here in Austin. He's genuinely probably the most creative, driven, well-rounded person I know and so when he asked me to put together a contribution to the magazine I was immediately on board.

He told me he's looking to try and put together something like a curation of short stories, articles, excerpts, etc. under a cohesive theme for each edition. He asked me if I have anything I would like people to read that matches that description so this is me thinking that out! My initial idea was a theme of Magical Realism. I would curate a collection of poems, short stories, and non-fiction writing that evokes the sense of overlooked wonder and awe that so much of my worldview is based around. I like that topic and I started right away taking a dozen books off my bookshelf and sprawling them out at certain passages on my bed. I actually have a special way of marking passages that align with this theme which I've utilized for years of folding the bottom corner of the page or pasting a small cornflower blue post-it note onto the page. As I read through the different passages I've marked over the years a few things were coming to me. First, some of the stuff sounded a little preachy or kooky. For me it's a serious spiritual and scienfitic worldview that is very complex and some of the things I have marked are quite pedantic and not all that fun to read. I also think some of it would come off as some kind of New Age religion pamphlet which I don't like. I want this to be a compilation of excerpts that are beautiful and engaging to read. Not overly philosophical or pedantic.

At the same time as these concerns were arising I also started to notice a theme in the more engaging sections I had gathered: The Sun. Coincidentally, I took a break to go get lunch and in the car The Beach Boys' The Warmth of the Sun played on the radio. That seemed as good a thread to follow as any so I'm exploring a curated selection of poems, short stories, and excerpts centered around the sun. What could be more magical yet overlooked? I think it would be cool to have a QR code that links to a Spotify playlist of sun-related songs as well. I think a theme called The Warmth of the Sun would fit perfectly in the hands of swimmers and sunbathers gathered on the grassy hill of Barton Springs on a hot weekend day.

Below are the selections I've gathered so far:

1. There is another sky by Emily Dickinson (this poem is addressed to her brother Austin—how serendipitous!)
2. The Golden Apples of the Sun by Ray Bradbury
3. Lieutenant Mamiya's Long Story from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
4. The Sun in Our Midst by Kerry Temple
5. The Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan

Fun Sun Facts

1. The Sun is about 4.6 billion years old! He or she is an old man/lady!
2. Question: If the Sun is so big and the bigger something is the greater its gravity, why doesn't it collapse in on itself?
   Answer: Inside the core of the sun the equivalent of billions of nuclear bombs are going off perpetually every single second. This nuclear fusion, just like a bomb, pushes outwards with staggering force—enough to overcome the already staggering strength of gravity. It is for this reason alone that the sun does not collapse into itself and we are able to live!
3. Thanks to Einstein's discoveries we know that the speed of light is the fastest anything in the universe can move. Amazingly, the closer you reach to the speed of light, the slower you move through time relative to those standing still. For instance, if you were to get on a rocket ship and travel at half the speed of light for one year, on Earth more than one year and two months would pass. If you were to travel at 0.99 times the speed of light for a year, seven years would pass on Earth! But what if you are a photon just birthed in the crucible of the Sun's core, travelling away outwards at 1.0 times the speed of light? How much time would pass for you relative to those on Earth? The answer: No time would pass for you. The moment you were born and the moment you reached your destination on this page, for instance, would be the exact same moment from your perspective. How weird!