Far out, Guillem

#I like to think of my­self more of a hippy than a punk. I'm tac­tile, al­ler­gic to ra­zors, hap­pily pre-oc­cu­pied with de­tail and things I am close to, while also fre­quently a cos­mic dreamer.

What is un­man­age­able is the mid­dle dis­tance, the blur of so­cial non­sense dom­i­nated by the human con­di­tion of self-ob­ses­sion - to be com­pul­sively (or re­luc­tantly) im­mersed in the repet­i­tive fatu­ous ac­tions of our species.

I try and keep up with (and be pos­i­tive about) so­cial evo­lu­tion and try and stand up for what I think is log­i­cal (mem­ber of Green­peace for ex­am­ple), but, man, it grows in­creas­ingly hard, chiefly be­cause we never seem to learn; and es­pe­cially now when, yet again, there seems to be a height­ened zeal for in­tol­er­ance. As Plato's Re­pub­lic de­fined, these manic days , these dan­ger­ous stu­pidi­ties, were pre­dictable. Lit­tle com­fort.

My near­est and dear­est fan around me in beau­ti­ful cir­cles – my fam­ily at the heart, my friends, my vil­lage and wider com­mu­nity here in The Pri­o­rat and in fa­mil­iar pock­ets around the world. And I in­clude my im­me­di­ate wild en­vi­ron­ment in this deep ap­pre­ci­a­tion, the com­plex­i­ties and won­ders of the small­est things from the weave of a bird's nest to the purring wings of a labour­ing car­pen­ter bee.

All of the above make me mind­ful. When I am with them or think of them, I can man­age. But too much ex­po­sure to the pre­car­i­ous state of hu­mankind, of news over­load and imag­in­ings of dire des­tinies, I need to step out into na­ture, often into the night.

No light pol­lu­tion up here in the hills. Venus has been stun­ningly bright through Jan­u­ary into Feb­ru­ary. It is close, the near­est planet, and yet so far, a mea­sure of how in­signif­i­cant this pan­tomime on a pea re­ally is. And then, jaw gap­ing, neck locked back, I wan­der through the arc of in­fin­ity, men­tally adrift in space, al­ways over­whelmed by the fath­om­less mys­ter­ies until I fall over the wheel­bar­row or a bucket.

Given my time again I would like to be Guillem, or at least to be blessed with the deep in­tel­li­gence and in­sa­tiable cu­rios­ity of some­one like him. That would be Cata­lan as­tronomer Guillem Anglada-Escudé, of course, one of the world's top sci­en­tists, a pi­o­neer, a ge­nius, try­ing to dis­cover the fu­ture.

Did you know, for ex­am­ple, that the clos­est ex­o­planet to us which may also be the clos­est pos­si­ble abode for life out­side the solar sys­tem, is called Promixa b? Guillem found it and named it last year, to right­ful ex­cite­ment and ac­claim. He and his team of as­tronomers from Queen Mary Uni­ver­sity, Lon­don, are now going to see if they can find signs of life there. How cool is that?

Cat­alo­nia at the fore­front of sci­ence yet again. Out of sight.

I was going to joke that Guillem was nei­ther hippy nor punk but a rock star, but that would be dread­ful.