{"id":1158,"date":"2009-04-14T09:40:50","date_gmt":"2009-04-14T07:40:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/?p=1158"},"modified":"2009-04-14T01:41:34","modified_gmt":"2009-04-13T23:41:34","slug":"jonas-and-the-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/jonas-and-the-stars\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonas and the stars."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/wanderingeyes.tumblr.com\/\">Jonas<\/a>, the most charming man who ever rode a fixie, visited with us the past couple of days. We spend a couple of days sightseeing Gothenburg and a couple of nights sightseeing bars. As it turns out I don&#8217;t really know this city as well as I ought to considering the six years I&#8217;ve done here. It&#8217;s odd what you find out when you&#8217;re a tourist in your own city. For example: It is very difficult to find a totally dark place where you can observe the stars, even if you go out of the city.<\/p>\n<p>As a kid I remember staring up at the night sky, feeling both awe at the vastness of the universe and an aching sense of unfairness that I might not get to go out into space and travel between stars. The books I&#8217;d read and the movies I&#8217;d seen had made the sensation of space exploration so vivid in my mind that I could almost sense the hum of engines under my feet and taste the stale, reconditioned air.<\/p>\n<p>The sense of loss was not about privilege lost; It wasn&#8217;t parents or class or education that was holding me back, but rather our limited technological development, and as such this acts as a great equaliser: We have but to look up to recognise the inconsequence of our own wishes \u2013 or least some of them \u2013  and there&#8217;s something liberating about it. It might remind us of the limits of human experience, but just as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mfoundation.org\/index.php?pagename=mj_about_mission\">death<\/a> is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wnyc.org\/shows\/radiolab\/episodes\/2007\/06\/15\">malleable<\/a>, these limits are <em>material<\/em> and not absolute.<\/p>\n<p>The emotion I experience looking at the stars is sadness at not getting to go, but also a brazen defiance, a reassurance: If only I could live long enough, <em>it would have been me<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/pano-jonas-anna-jan-ramberget.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"pano-jonas-anna-jan-ramberget\" width=\"640\" height=\"336\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-1160\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jonas, the most charming man who ever rode a fixie, visited with us the past couple of days. We spend a couple of days sightseeing Gothenburg and a couple of nights sightseeing bars. As it turns out I don&#8217;t really know this city as well as I ought to considering the six years I&#8217;ve done &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/jonas-and-the-stars\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Jonas and the stars.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,279],"tags":[686,169,596,684,339,683],"class_list":["post-1158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-friends","category-photography","tag-fantasy","tag-goteborg","tag-science-bitches","tag-space-travel","tag-stars","tag-visiting-friends"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1158"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1176,"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1158\/revisions\/1176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}